Questions tagged [backwards-compatibility]
For questions about adding new features without breaking legacy code.
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Preserving backwards compatibility when adding new keywords
Inspired by Why do keywords have to be reserved words?
Suppose that you're the BDFL of a programming language. Version 1 of the language becomes decently popular. A few years later, you decide to ...
- 1,969
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Why do keywords have to be reserved words?
In many languages, the authors are hesitant to add more keywords, because doing so would break any existing code that happens to use those keywords as identifiers. However, they could do what C is ...
- 8,793