Date:	Sun, 20 Sep 1998 10:16:54 +0300 (IDT)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	Charles Marslett <charles DOT marslett AT vlsi DOT com>
cc:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: auto-binary-mode? [OT: What is text mode?]
In-Reply-To:	<3602AA07.DD74FEB0@vlsi.com>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.980920101122.406C-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Charles Marslett wrote:

> How does the "-literally" function work?  No CR/LF -> LF conversions and
> binary-overwrite, I would guess.  Any other specific behavior?

``Literally'' means literally: i.e., no conversions whatever.  You get in 
the buffer exactly what is on the disk.  And vice versa, when you save 
the buffer in the file.

> Maybe we are using different definitions of the phrase "side effect."  To
> me, it refers to the fact that a programmer must have knowledge of the file
> system to properly write a program that does not manipulate the file system
> explicitly.

No, you just need to know what ANSI standard promises, and not use any 
functionality beyond that, if you want your program to work on more than 
a single platform.  In the case of fseek/ftell, ANSI explicitly says that 
you can't rely on any simple relationship between what fseek returns and 
the byte offsets into the file.

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