Why does <? not work???

[capitales7]

Hello all.

I was wondering why XAMPP only executes PHP scripts with <?php and not when they have <? only?
It's rather annoying since my entire web root (around 20 projects) are all in the <? form.
Do I really need to global replace like 100 files to get it working with XAMPP?

I'm using 1.7.3 on Win7 Enterprise 32bit.
Thanks.

[capitales7]

Actually, nevermind.
A colleague just reminded me that the php.ini contains the "short_open_tag" directive, which is apparently left off in XAMPP.
However, since php.net recomment you use the <?php, I might update all my code.