From: huott@pinebush.com (Ed Huott) Subject: Re: cat and binary files 10 Apr 1997 19:21:57 -0700 Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199704101734.NAA16374.cygnus.gnu-win32@sol.pinebush.com> Original-To: Tim Iverson Original-cc: marc@watson.ibm.com, gnu-win32@cygnus.com In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 09 Apr 1997 19:38:31 PDT." <199704100238.TAA21049@rottweiler.cisco.com> Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com In message <199704100238.TAA21049@rottweiler.cisco.com>, Tim Iverson writes: >If cat is stopping at Ctl-Z on anything but console input, it is a bug. >There has been no actual "end-of-file" marker in DOS since version 2.0. >The Ctl-Z is only EOF for the *console*, just like Ctl-D is EOF for >/dev/tty under Unix. And, like /dev/tty, it's only EOF when the console is >in cooked mode. If you put the console into raw mode, Ctl-Z does nothing. > >Some DOS programs have yet to alter their behavior and still place Ctl-Z at >the end of disk files. This is also a bug, though if you want to support >DOS 1.0, you could call it a feature. > >All this aside, IMHO, cat is inherently a binary program -- it shouldn't >care whether newline is CR, LF, or CR+LF unless one of the line-based >options is used (bns). > >BTW, I wouldn't recommend using binary mode. I tried that briefly and >found that rebuilding will fail rather miserably. > The relative merits of text vs. binary mode have all been discussed on this list before in some excruciating detail. I would suggest perusing the mailing list archives to anyone new who is interested in the subject. I do not wish to rekindle that thread here. - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".