Subject: Text file format (off-topic, was Re: using cat on binary files (
From: [email-masked] ("Shane Kerr")

29 Oct 1996 23:29:38 -0800
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I know this is probably pretty far off of the GNU-WIN32 topic, but...

> Maybe we can file a class action suit for a few billion against the
> turkey who unleashed on the world a system with such fundamentally
> bad design decisions as a two-character EOL indicator and an in-band
> EOF indicator.

You have to understand where the Win32 file system came from: MS-DOS.
Then you have to understand where the MS-DOS file system came from: 
CP/M.  In CP/M, there was no system information describing the size 
of a file - only the number of blocks that it used.  So an in-band 
EOF indicator was needed. 

As for the two-character EOL, it _does_ more accurately represent
what's happening when you dump a text file to a line printer or a
terminal.  At the end of each line, you want to go down a line, for
which you use a newline character, then you want to move the print
head back to the left-hand side, for which you use a carriage return 
(return the carriage to the left).  When you think of it like this, 
it's UNIX (newline only) and Macs (carriage return only) that have a 
bogus text file format, not CP/M, MS-DOS, and Win32.

The true evil is the different standards, not that any particular 
standard is really that bad.  Yes, it sucks that we have to deal with 
it now.  But, as my boss says, it's easy to criticize, and hard to 
create.
--
Shani Kerr                  For my PGP key, finger [email-masked]
[email-masked]                                        Reston, Virginia
http://www.wizard.net/~kerr/
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