Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!operators
From: operators@watmath.UUCP (M.F.C.F. Operators)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: questions from using lint
Message-ID: <2417@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 3-May-86 16:22:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.2417
Posted: Sat May  3 16:22:08 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 4-May-86 05:51:51 EDT
References: <453@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: operators@watmath.UUCP (Alan T. Bowler [SDG])
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 15
Summary: 

In article <453@brl-smoke.ARPA> rbj@icst-cmr (Root Boy Jim) writes:
>Most of the code I have written was intrinsically non-portable. I *do*
>appreciate portability as a spectrum concept, but not as a binary one.

Good point.  There seems to be a lot of people confusing "portability"
and "machine-independance".  Some years ago Malcolm and Rogers defined
a measure they called the "portability index" of a program

               cost to modify the existing code for new environment
      index = -----------------------------------------------------
                Cost to recode from scratch an equivalent program

Where "cost" is appropriate function for your environment
time, money etc.
A machine independant program would have a portabily index of 0.