Re: igncr vs text mode mounts, performance vs compatibility

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-no-personal-reply-please at cygwin dot com>]

On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 10:29:44PM -0500, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
>> From:  Eric Blake
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:03 PM
>> Subject: Re: igncr vs text mode mounts, performance vs compatibility
>>
>> According to Lewis Hyatt on 10/24/2006 12:57 PM:
>> > Just a thought, it would probably solve 99% of people's problems if 
>> > you just specified that if the first line of the script 
>> ends in \r\n, 
>> > then \r will be ignored for the rest of the file. Then you 
>> would just 
>> > need to read the first line a byte at a time, and every subsequent 
>> > line could be read efficiently whenever possible, right? 
>> And it seems 
>> > unlikely that this could possibly break anything.
>> 
>> Propose a patch, and I will consider it.  In my opinion, it 
>> was much easier to do igncr as an all or none option than it 
>> was to parse the first line and discard \r on a per-file 
>> basis, not to mention that all-or-none is easily configurable 
>> so that those of us who WANT literal \r
>
>I'm just curious here: *Why* do you (or anybody else) want bash to not
>ignore \r's (or better stated, to only understand The One True Text File
>Format (Whatever That Is)(tm))?  I keep trying to figure out what is going
>to break when bash suddenly is able to understand \r\n as well as \n, and
>keep coming up empty.  Furthermore, I don't recall a single instance of
>anybody coming to the list with a problem that was due to bash ignoring \r's
>(when it used to do so).

I think I'm going to start a counter.  With one exception, I'm going to
start counting each category at three even though that's probably a low
figure.

Repetitive Observation                                    Count*

Someone suggests that the best way to handle the CRLF       3
problem is to read the first line but doesn't offer
a patch.

Someone expresses confusion about the reasons for the       3
changes to bash.

Someone expresses philosophical points of view about        3
Cygwin's goals based on their discoveries about bash.

Someone generalizes that bash and make decisions were       3
somehow intertwined.

Someone notices problems with bash after an upgrade         5
but ignores any bash announcements.

cgf