From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-03-23T01:17:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows version of Ruby (proposals)

Hi,

In message "Re: Windows version of Ruby (proposals)"
    on 02/03/22, Dave Thomas <Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> writes:

|I think everyone agrees on the first point - we should provide
|portability. And to 95% of the scripts out there, the kind of basic
|facilities I was suggesting _are_ portable: reading and writing files,
|running external commands through #system, and so on.
|
|But file modes, ACL lists, symbolic links, and the like are not
|portable, and never will be. They can be emulated to greater or lesser
|extents, but you always lose something in that emulation.
|
|So, to my mind, we actually achieve _better_ portability by providing
|a common set of functions that we guarantee work across all platforms,
|and then by providing platform-specific personalities for the less
|commonly used features that are platform-specific.
|
|I think Ruby has an opportunity here to show other languages just
|_how_ to be a portable scripting language. Let's not just blindly
|follow Perl into the "Unix everywhere" model, but instead let's think
|about what's best for our users.

First, I agree with you.  That's what I meant by the word "polish".

Second, but I still prefer UNIXized model, so the future model still
will be more UNIX influenced rather than platform neutral.  Note I'm
not against to provide platform specific additional file operations.

							matz.