Is this a philosophical question?

From: name (user_at_host.domain)
Date: 08/28/04 

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 19:29:24 -0000

I've asked this question more specifically in a specifically appropriate
forum, and all due apologies are offered for this 'multi-post' (?). But now
I'm curious about the more general issues:

I must presume that any program written in any language will have some
portability problems, even though some languages are "guaranteed" to be
universally portable. How is this handled?

In my case, I cobbled up a small C application which will require a wrapper
script of some sort to be useful, unless implementation specific code is
added. In the spirit of C purity, I've decided against the latter course.
So there will be two levels of code, where the core will remain untouched
and platform adaptability will be handled in the outer script.

Now, I know that one of the criticisms of C is that it doesn't "do"
implementation specific stuff, that such things are added by any given
implementation. I'm also given to understand that other languages address
this successfully, and so one presumes all code is write once, compile
anywhere.

But what if this turns out not to be the case. Does one modify the code
itself, or does one add implementation specific code at a separate level, or
as a sort of plug-in, or what?

All rants and flames and oratory and proclamations and pontifications and
... are welcome, and I'll probably just lurk-'n-learn.

Thanks for reading and all replies are appreciated! 

-- 
Email is wtallman at olypen dot com

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