Subject: Re: smtp mail failed
From: [email-masked] (Benjamin Riefenstahl)

19 Oct 1998 19:08:23 -0700
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To: [email-masked]

Hi Marcus,

139a80000-HallM(DR3132)37x10 wrote:
> While I agree 100% with this view, there are some difficulties that are
> particularly apparent with archive software.  If tar is unpacking a file,
> (or packing it, for that matter) is it a binary file or a text file?

Now that one's easy. If in doubt, even just a little bit of doubt, use
binary. If you have treated a text file as binary, you just need a
decent editor or a conversion tool like dos2unix etc to get the right
format. OTOH if you have treated a binary as text the file can usually
not be regenerated. Archivers should *always* use binary for the
archived files IMO.

It's more difficult to argue the case for tools like cat. At first sight
one would think that cat is a text processing tool. But when one looks
at it more closely it's actually used as a generic file combining and
redirection tool. So even cat should use binary mode.

so long, benny
======================================
Benjamin Riefenstahl ([email-masked])
Crocodial Communications EntwicklungsGmbH
Ruhrstraße 61, D-22761 Hamburg, Germany
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