From: fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why? 28 Jan 1997 09:23:33 -0800 Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199701281434.BAA11080.cygnus.gnu-win32@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Content-Type: text Original-To: jqb@rain.org (Jim Balter) Original-Cc: gnu-win32@cygnus.com (gnu-win32) In-Reply-To: <199701280500.VAA04079@coyote.rain.org> from "Jim Balter" at Jan 27, 97 09:00:27 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com Jim Balter wrote: > > Stephan Mueller writes > > > IMO, the only way to truly solve this problem once and for all is to > > gradually incorporate text/binary mode awareness into the official GNU > > sources. Yes, I agree. > > That means that all fopens that really mean to open in binary > > should have the 'b' added, and all code that follows fopens that really > > mean text mode should be examined and changed if they assume things like > > 'the size of the file equals the number of charcters in a read of the > > whole file'. The code isn't 'bad' the way it is, it's just > > Unix-centric, and not entirely ANSI conformant. > > Of course it's Unix-centric; it's GNU code, and GNU project is a Unix > emulation. Yes, of course, that explains the historical reasons. But this is the GNU-win32 mailing list: we're trying to port GNU software to Windows. > > It will be more useful > > and more portable if these things are fixed, and I'm sure in time they > > will be. > > Why be sure of something that's probably false? Le me repeat: we're trying to port GNU software to Windows. Do you have a better suggestion on how to do this? > The GNU project has limited goals, and they explicitly do not include > [...] systems that have separate text and binary modes Yes, the GNU-win32 project's goals are not the same as the GNU project's goals. So? > Notably, in POSIX systems, reading as many bytes from a file as stat says it > contains is perfectly appropriate behavior, and GNU code won't be "dumbed" > down for the sake of non-POSIX systems. "Why be sure of something that's probably false?" GNU code probably *will* be "dumbed down" for the sake of non-POSIX systems, because (a) that seems to be the only way to achieve the GNU-win32 project's goals and hence (b) the GNU-win32 developers will supply the GNU code maintainers with patches to make it work on GNU-win32 and (c) most of the GNU code maintainers will be quite happy to incorporate patches that make their software more portable, [not to mention the fact that (d) the GNU code maintainers and the GNU-win32 developers often one and the same, namely Cygnus]. Even if there are a few recalcitrant GNU code maintainers who refuse to accept these patches, that doesn't matter too much *because it is free software* --- you can get the source and apply the patches yourself. -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".