Sender:	Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be
Message-ID:	<3601055A.6993@rug.ac.be>
Date:	Thu, 17 Sep 1998 14:49:30 +0200
From:	Vik Heyndrickx <Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
MIME-Version:	1.0
To:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: auto-binary-mode?
References:	<199809152120 DOT RAA08510 AT delorie DOT com>

DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> Hey, I just had an idea.  When a file is opened and the first block is
> read in, if the user didn't specify binary or text, why not look at
> the data and try to guess?  The presence of null, control, or certain
> 8-bit characters should indicate binary vs text as a default.

I've had this idea too (see the archives), but the problems seems to be
that the guessing once in a while will fail to work as others pointed
out.
What about this suggestion:
Keep a directory of filenames within one special db-file along with
extra information indicating whether a file is true binary, unixy text
or DOS text. Whenever a call to fopen (et al.) is issued, fopen searches
this directory to know the nature of the file.
A possible extension would be to store LFN aliases for 8+3 fns.

-- 
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