Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
From: [email-masked] (Jim Balter)

29 Jan 1997 22:12:50 -0800
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Fran Litterio wrote:
> I just tried Notepad under NT 4.0 Workstation, and it works fine on text
> files lacking any CRs.  In fact, after editting a NL-terminated text
> file with Notepad and saving it, the file still doesn't contain CRNL
> sequences!  If I didn't know better, I'd say Microsoft has _deprectated_
> the use of CR in text-files.

Did you check the file size to be *sure* that it does not contain CR's?
On my NT 4.0 system, Notepad shows naked linefeeds as solid blocks
and does not break the line after them.

> >and the WinZip internal file viewer
> 
> Ditto.  I just tried it and it works fine with a text file lacking CRs.

Mine shows linefeeds as something like a reverse-video O.
I strongly suspect cockpit error.

> >and probably plenty of others.
> 
> I can't find any NT 4.0 app that reacts badly to a text file that's
> missing CRs.

Perhaps you should share your test file.
Or try it again with, say, \WINNT\ShellIconCache

> >The current situation is that, even fixing things like gzip,
> >the rest of the tools are useless on help files, executables,
> >databases, or any other sort of file that isn't a "text" file.
> 
> But not if gnu-win32 goes all-binary-all-the-time, correct?

Right; by "the current situation" I meant "text" mode.

> I agree that if a friend gives you a text file containing CRNL newline
> sequences, then gnu-win32 tools will preserve those ^Ms.  But that's no
> different than if you're on a UNIX workstation and someone mails you
> such a text file or it you download it via HTTP.

Exactly.  unix deals with byte streams, and there are many tools for
manipulating them, rather than having systems that think
they know what they are doing deleting every byte after a ^Z
and destroying valuable work.

> UNIX folks have been
> typing
> 
>         tr -d '\015' <dosfile >unixfile
> 
> >ever since PCs began connecting to the net.

Or putting it into a script and using it as a filter.

--
<J Q B>
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