portability

por·ta·ble

P0453400 (pôr′tə-bəl)adj.1. Carried or moved with ease: a portable typewriter; a portable generator.2. Capable of being transferred from one employer to another. Used of an employee benefit.3. Computers Relating to or being software that can run on two or more kinds of computers or with two or more kinds of operating systems.4. Obsolete Bearable; endurable.n. Something, such as a light or small typewriter, that can be carried or moved with ease.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin portābilis, from Latin portāre, to carry; see per- in Indo-European roots.]

por′ta·bil′i·ty, por′ta·ble·ness n.por′ta·bly adv.

port•a•bil•i•ty

(ˌpɔr təˈbɪl ɪ ti, ˌpoʊr-)

n., pl. -ties. 1. the state or quality of being portable. 2. a system under which employees may transfer pension or retirement benefits from one employer's plan to that of another, as when they change jobs. [1965–70]

Thesaurus

Noun

portability - the quality of being light enough to be carriedmovability, movableness - the quality of being movable; capable of being moved or rearranged

Translations

portability

[‚pȯrd·ə′bil·əd·ē] (computer science) Property of a computer program that is sufficiently flexible to be easily transferred to run on a computer of a type different from the one for which it was designed.

portability

(operating system, programming)The ease with which a piece ofsoftware (or file format) can be "ported", i.e. made to runon a new platform and/or compile with a new compiler.

The most important factor is the language in which thesoftware is written and the most portable language is almostcertainly C (though see Vaxocentrism for counterexamples).This is true in the sense that C compilers are available formost systems and are often the first compiler provided for anew system. This has led several compiler writers to compileother languages to C code in order to benefit from itsportability (as well as the quality of compilers available forit).

The least portable type of language is obviously assembly code since it is specific to one particular (family of)processor(s). It may be possible to translate mechanicallyfrom one assembly code (or even machine code) into anotherbut this is not really portability. At the other end of thescale would come interpreted or semi-compiled languagessuch as LISP or Java which rely on the availability of aportable interpreter or virtual machine written in a lowerlevel language (often C for the reasons outlined above).

The act or result of porting a program is called a "port".E.g. "I've nearly finished the Pentium port of my big bangsimulation."

Portability is also an attribute of file formats and dependson their adherence to standards (e.g. ISO 8859) or theavailability of the relevant "viewing" software for differentplatforms (e.g. PDF).

Portability

The character of benefits that may be carried from a previous job to the next.

Portability

The ability to take one's benefits, particularly health insurance, from one job to another. Some U.S. states require health insurance companies to offer portability. It exists to protect people from the possibility that they will lose their health insurance and be unable to acquire a new policy because of a pre-existing condition that develops between acquiring the first policy and looking for a second.

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Words related to portability

noun the quality of being light enough to be carried

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