[Python-Dev] Portable and OS-dependent module idea/proposal/

[Gordon McMillan]

Jack Jansen wrote:

> There's one slight problem with this: when you use functionality
> that is partially portable, i.e. a call that is available on Windows
> and Unix but not on the Mac.

 It gets worse, I think. How about the inconsistencies in POSIX 
support among *nixes? How about NT being a superset of Win9x? How 
about NTFS having capabilities that FAT does not? I'd guess there are 
inconsistencies between Mac flavors, too.

 The Java approach (if you can't do it everywhere, you can't do it)
sucks. In some cases you could probably have the missing
functionality (in os) fail silently, but in other cases that would
be a disaster. 

 "Least-worst"-is-not-necessarily-"good"-ly y'rs

- Gordon