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Date:	Sun, 24 Feb 2002 10:23:37 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: What features make WinZip a bad idea?
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On Sat, 23 Feb 2002, W Thex wrote:

> > >One other ``feature'' is that WinZip converts text files to DOS CR-LF
> > >format.  That could wreak havoc on some semi-ASCII files.
> 
> There is something that sound important.  How would I know, if that
> converstion took place?

I have no idea, I stopped using WinZip long time ago.

> And what "havoc" could it wreak?

There are files that look like text, but aren't.  Changing each LF to
CR-LF corrupts those files, because they aren't meant for human
consumption, where the end-of-line format doesn't matter.  These files
are meant for programs, and programs choke on extra characters where
they don't expect them.

One notable example of this breakage is some of the files in the Emacs
distribution: converting them to CR-LF is known to break the build of
Emacs in strange ways.

IMHO, it's no business of an unzip program to do any changes in a file
it extracts, unless the user explicitly asks for that.

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