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Re: [PATCH bleadperl] [ID 20010426.002] Word boundry regex [...]

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From:
Jarkko Hietaniemi
Date:
April 29, 2001 17:23
Subject:
Re: [PATCH bleadperl] [ID 20010426.002] Word boundry regex [...]
Message ID:
20010429192245.Q26955@chaos.wustl.edu
On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 10:43:11PM +0100, Hugo wrote:
> In <20010429153522.A25462@math.ohio-state.edu>, Ilya Zakharevich writes:
> :> --- thrdvar.h.old	Tue Jan 30 18:14:40 2001
> :> +++ thrdvar.h	Sun Apr 29 16:18:07 2001
> :> @@ -183,7 +183,6 @@
> :>  PERLVAR(Tregendp,	I32 *)		/* Ditto for endp. */
> :>  PERLVAR(Treglastparen,	U32 *)		/* Similarly for lastparen. */
> :>  PERLVAR(Tregtill,	char *)		/* How far we are required to go. */
> :> -PERLVAR(Tregprev,	char)		/* char before regbol, \n if none */
> :>  PERLVAR(Treg_start_tmp,	char **)	/* from regexec.c */
> :>  PERLVAR(Treg_start_tmpl,U32)		/* from regexec.c */
> :>  PERLVAR(Tregdata,	struct reg_data *)
> :
> :This is not possible for binary backward-compatibility reasons.  The
> :old entries should remain.
> 
> Is that relevant for bleadperl? I thought binary compatibility was
> already broken between 5.6 and 5.8. If not, it should probably be
> renamed to 'unused' or somesuch if the rest of the patch is accepted.

I have made no moves to intentionally break binary compatibility.  On
the other hand, I have made no moves to intentionally protect binary
compatibility, either.

On the third hand I can think of two things breaking binary
compatibility: (1) the numeric radix separator was just a char but now
is a full SV, (2) and that in 64bitall platforms the system malloc
will be used.  The (1) is still fixable (in fact for 5.6.1 we put in
a modified version of the fix, which did 'retire' the old variable,
and employ a new one).

Of course, I don't quite see how any code that uses internal
interfaces can hope to be binary backward compatible for very long
since the interfaces do change over time: functions do change their
argument signatures, for example.

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen

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