backward compatibility


backward compatibility

[¦bak·wərd kəm‚pad·ə′bil·əd·ē] (computer science) downward compatibility

backward compatibility

(jargon)Able to share data or commands with older versions ofitself, or sometimes other older systems, particularly systemsit intends to supplant. Sometimes backward compatibility islimited to being able to read old data but does not extend tobeing able to write data in a format that can be read by oldversions.

For example, WordPerfect 6.0 can read WordPerfect 5.1 files,so it is backward compatible. It can be said that Perl isbackward compatible with awk, because Perl was (among otherthings) intended to replace awk, and can, with a converter,run awk programs.

See also: backward combatability.

Compare: forward compatible.