Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/09/27/10:00:16
On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, Bonifati wrote:
> i have to write some filter programs which must work for binary files, not
> only for text ones.
>
> i tried to open console into binary mode, but my program crashes when the
> input isn't redirect from a file.
It doesn't crash, see below. But I don't understand why did you need
to switch the console device into binary mode when what you need is to
process binary files. Specifically, what does processing binary files
have to do with the text/binary mode of the console?
> C:\> test
> the program hangs!
> nothing appears if i press some keys and CTRL-Break doesn't work!
This is all explained in the library docs, under the `setmode'
function. Switching the console into binary mode has the side effect
of switching the CON device into the so-called raw (as opposed to
cooked) mode. In raw mode, characters are read one by one with no
echo, and Ctrl-BREAK and Ctrl-C are by default disabled. So your
program actually is alive and cicking, it just appears to hang because
you don't see any characters being echoed, and because you cannot
terminate the program by any means (Ctrl-Z is also ignored in raw
mode, so you cannot signal EOF).
Please be sure to read the docs for `setmode' and `signal' for more
details.
As I said above, I don't understand why did you need to switch the
console to binary mode in the first place. My guess is that this is
not needed for your application. Please explain what you are trying
to accomplish and why do you think the default text mode of the
console is not good enough for that.
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