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RE: upload: diffstat-1.40-1, tar-1.15.1-1
- From: "Gary R. Van Sickle" <g dot r dot vansickle at worldnet dot att dot net>
- To: <cygwin-apps at cygwin dot com>
- Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 22:24:47 -0500
- Subject: RE: upload: diffstat-1.40-1, tar-1.15.1-1
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-apps-owner@cygwin.com
> [mailto:cygwin-apps-owner@cygwin.com] On Behalf Of Eric Blake
> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 9:41 PM
> To: cygwin-apps@cygwin.com
> Subject: RE: upload: diffstat-1.40-1, tar-1.15.1-1
>
> > >
> > > But opening with "rt" is non-POSIX,
> >
> > No it isn't. POSIX requires any CRT that doesn't
> understand or care
> > about the second character to ignore it.
>
> This is the POSIX definition of fopen():
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fopen.html
>
> In there, it specifically calls out that "r" and "rb" are
> synonyms, and says nothing about ignoring the second
> character. Likewise, "r+", "r+b", and "rb+" ar synonyms, and
> here b isn't always the second character. And it omits any
> mention of "rt".
>
You're right. What the heck was I looking at? I thought it might have been
an earlier SUS, but version 2 says pretty much the same thing. Whatever it
was, I know it didn't call out any synonyms for anything, and did mention
ignoring whatever wan't understood. I ran into a similar situation with
mutt.
> On fopen(), cygwin is only compliant with POSIX (ie. "r" and "rb"
> behave identically) if you link with binmode.o or if you use
> a binary mount point. Text mount points are the only place
> where "r" and "rb" behave differently, since in POSIX, text
> files and binary files have no line ending distinction.
Well, like I explained to Korny, POSIX doesn't specify file contents (though
I suppose I'd better qualify that, see above!). The *Unix* world thinks all
files are text files, which is insane, and the cause of the disaster we have
before us called Computer "Science". Ponder if you will: it's the 21st
century, our disposable flying cars get a thousand nautical miles per gallon
(of water of course), there's a Chicken-Flavored Pill in every pot, the moon
is lousy with moonbases, people are living on Mars and vacationing in
low-earth-orbit Space Hotels, the common cold has finally been cured, and
yet here we are worrying about whether it's an "\n" or an "\r\n" at the end
of a line of text.
This is progress? I call it madness. A house divided against its line
endings can not endure.
--
Gary R. Van Sickle