Subject: Re: cat and binary files
From: [email-masked] (Ed Huott)

10 Apr 1997 19:21:57 -0700
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Original-To: Tim Iverson <[email-masked]>
Original-cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 09 Apr 1997 19:38:31 PDT."
             <[email-masked]> 
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

In message <[email-masked]>, Tim Iverson writes:
>If cat is stopping at Ctl-Z on anything but console input, it is a bug.
>There has been no actual "end-of-file" marker in DOS since version 2.0.
>The Ctl-Z is only EOF for the *console*, just like Ctl-D is EOF for
>/dev/tty under Unix.  And, like /dev/tty, it's only EOF when the console is
>in cooked mode.  If you put the console into raw mode, Ctl-Z does nothing.
>
>Some DOS programs have yet to alter their behavior and still place Ctl-Z at
>the end of disk files.  This is also a bug, though if you want to support
>DOS 1.0, you could call it a feature.
>
>All this aside, IMHO, cat is inherently a binary program -- it shouldn't
>care whether newline is CR, LF, or CR+LF unless one of the line-based
>options is used (bns).
>
>BTW, I wouldn't recommend using binary mode.  I tried that briefly and
>found that rebuilding will fail rather miserably.
>

The relative merits of text vs. binary mode have all been discussed on
this list before in some excruciating detail.  I would suggest
perusing the mailing list archives to anyone new who is interested in
the subject.  I do not wish to rekindle that thread here.

<ED>
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