From: riche AT crl DOT com (Alex Stewart)
Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
30 Jan 1997 23:31:02 -0800
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Original-To: fjh AT cs DOT mu DOT OZ DOT AU (Fergus Henderson)
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In-Reply-To: <199701281409.BAA31757@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU> from "Fergus Henderson" at Jan 29, 97 01:09:49 am
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> It might well be straightforward to implement 't' and O_TEXT,
> but it would be a _bad idea_ to do so, because it would be a
> bad idea to use those features.  Using 't' and O_TEXT would be a bad
> idea even if they were implemented, because doing so would reduce
> portability, rather than improving it, because they are non-standard.

So your argument is "I don't want to use it, so nobody else should be allowed
to."?  That is, quite frankly, pathetic.

Addressing the portability issue, including a "t" flag in a fopen call does
not decrease portability in any way, as it will simply be ignored by any
libraries which do not support it.  O_TEXT will produce a compiler warning if
it isn't defined in a header file, but it is extremely easy to avoid that with
a simple:

#ifndef O_TEXT
#define O_TEXT 0
#endif

...resulting in code which is just as portable (some might argue more portable
because it will actually perform _properly_ on a wider number of systems).

Your arguments are therefore not only egocentric, but quite simply incorrect.

-alex
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Alex Stewart - riche AT crl DOT com - Richelieu @ Diversity University MOO
                         http://www.crl.com/~riche
           "For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."
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