Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com; run by ezmlm Sender: cygwin-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com Message-ID: <37701E3E.7AB58A36@geekspace.com> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 19:37:34 -0400 From: Joshua Rosen Organization: GEEKS X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en,ja,no MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com Subject: Re: How do I split binaries to manageable chunks References: <19990621171119 DOT 25746 DOT rocketmail AT send205 DOT yahoomail DOT com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Earnie Boyd wrote: > --- itz AT lbin DOT com wrote: > -8<- > > Well, this looks exactly like the situation that shows the ultimate > > futility of trying to accomodate MSDOG text files. How is split to > > know what type of file it is handling? Should we embed a copy of > > file(1) into split? Stoop down to MSDOG practice and rely on file > > names? Or what? > > The utility split should just always process in binary mode. Given that the `split' utility is meant to split text files, it should definitely -not- -always- process in binary mode, if only because splitting a multibyte newline character down the middle, putting part of the `single character' at the end of one file, and the rest of the character at the beginning of another file, is probaly not the best of ideas.... Though, in response to Ian's comments: it might be nice to have to option of splitting in binary mode, but embedding a version of file(1) into split(1) really isn't necessary to do that--all that'd be needed is a command-line flag to run split in binary mode. Again, UUEncoding the binary file and then splitting it is an option, too, but probably not the most desirable, because it adds two steps, every time you want to go through this procedure, and it gives you a larger file to split. As Phil said, one could use dd, but that's sort of cumbersome, so one could write up a shell script to simplify things, but it probably would be easier to just code a binary version of split, or, as has already been suggested, change the mode in the existing version and call it `bsplit' or something. Dit I miss anything? -Rozzin. -- Want to unsubscribe from this list? Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com