From: lhall AT rfk DOT com ("Larry Hall (RFK Partners Inc 617-239-1053)") Subject: Re: cat and binary files 10 Apr 1997 21:28:55 -0700 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <2.2.32.19970410224219.0093fac0.cygnus.gnu-win32@ma.ultranet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: lhall AT ma DOT ultranet DOT com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Original-To: Tim Iverson , huott AT pinebush DOT com (Ed Huott) Original-Cc: marc AT watson DOT ibm DOT com, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com At 07:38 PM 4/9/97 -0700, Tim Iverson wrote: >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. I would submit that you can extend your binary program argument further to encompass all the GNU tools. Certainly they were initially designed for platforms that had no "text mode" for files and their code makes no attempt to deal with issues arising from the use of "text" files. I don't want to open up an argument on how these tools should work in a DOS based environment but I would like to point out that using them on "text" files is basically an unsupported configuration. While it would be possible to go through all the utilities and alter the code to force the opening of files as binary, this is a lot of work and essentially only gets you the same functionality you get when you mount -b. I think most if not all would agree than mounting as binary is allot quicker than modifying any amount of code. I personally have been using binary mounts for some time now without any major difficulty. The only problems I do run into have to do with trying to handle "text" files created or edited by some DOS based program. Typically this situation shows up when a script file containing CRs is run or some startup/rc file with CRs is used. These problems are easily remedied by passing the offending file through some filter. Other than this "inter-operability" with DOS/Windows-based programs issue, I've seen no deleterious effects of using binary mounts, even for building. For me, its been a big help! Just my 2 cents. Larry Hall lhall AT rfk DOT com RFK Partners, Inc. (617) 239-1053 8 Grove Street (617) 239-1655 - FAX Wellesley, MA, 02181 - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".