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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
 


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