From:	benny AT crocodial DOT de (Benjamin Riefenstahl)
Subject:	Re: smtp mail failed
19 Oct 1998 19:08:23 -0700 :
Message-ID:	<362B1A94.C6A47AFF.cygnus.gnu-win32@crocodial.de>
References:	<199810141617 DOT KAA04778 AT chorus DOT dr DOT lucent DOT com>
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com

Hi Marcus,


139a80000-HallM(DR3132)37x10 wrote:
> While I agree 100% with this view, there are some difficulties that are
> particularly apparent with archive software.  If tar is unpacking a file,
> (or packing it, for that matter) is it a binary file or a text file?

Now that one's easy. If in doubt, even just a little bit of doubt, use
binary. If you have treated a text file as binary, you just need a
decent editor or a conversion tool like dos2unix etc to get the right
format. OTOH if you have treated a binary as text the file can usually
not be regenerated. Archivers should *always* use binary for the
archived files IMO.

It's more difficult to argue the case for tools like cat. At first sight
one would think that cat is a text processing tool. But when one looks
at it more closely it's actually used as a generic file combining and
redirection tool. So even cat should use binary mode.


so long, benny
======================================
Benjamin Riefenstahl (benny AT crocodial DOT de)
Crocodial Communications EntwicklungsGmbH
Ruhrstraße 61, D-22761 Hamburg, Germany
-
For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".

- Raw text -