backward compatibility
PROPERTY OF A SYSTEM, PRODUCT, OR TECHNOLOGY THAT ALLOWS FOR INTEROPERABILITY WITH AN OLDER LEGACY SYSTEM, OR WITH INPUT DESIGNED FOR SUCH A SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND COMPUTING
Backwards compatibility; Backward compatible; Backward-compatible; Backwards compatible; Backwards-compatible; Backward-compatibility; Backwards-compatibility; Downward compatible; Backwards Compatibility; Backwards compatability; Downward compatibility; Downward Compatibility; Hysterical raisins; Format rot; Legacy compatibility; Bugwards compatible; Bugwards compatibility; Bugward compatible; Bugward compatibility; Backward-incompatible; Breaking changes; Breaking change; Translation compatibility; Hysterical reasons; Retrocompatibility; Retrocompatible
<
jargon> Able to share data or commands with older versions of
itself, or sometimes other older systems, particularly systems
it intends to supplant. Sometimes backward
compatibility is
limited to being able to read old data but does not extend to
being able to write data in a format that can be read by old
versions.
For example,
WordPerfect 6.0 can read WordPerfect 5.1 files,
so it is backward compatible. It can be said that
Perl is
backward compatible with
awk, because Perl was (among other
things) intended to replace awk, and can, with a converter,
run awk programs.
See also:
backward combatability.
Compare:
forward compatible.
(2003-06-23)