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Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
- To: fjh at cs dot mu dot OZ dot AU (Fergus Henderson)
- Subject: Re: ASCII and BINARY files. Why?
- From: Alex Stewart <riche at crl dot com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 18:27:01 -0800 (PST)
- Cc: gnu-win32 at cygnus dot com
> It might well be straightforward to implement 't' and O_TEXT,
> but it would be a _bad idea_ to do so, because it would be a
> bad idea to use those features. Using 't' and O_TEXT would be a bad
> idea even if they were implemented, because doing so would reduce
> portability, rather than improving it, because they are non-standard.
So your argument is "I don't want to use it, so nobody else should be allowed
to."? That is, quite frankly, pathetic.
Addressing the portability issue, including a "t" flag in a fopen call does
not decrease portability in any way, as it will simply be ignored by any
libraries which do not support it. O_TEXT will produce a compiler warning if
it isn't defined in a header file, but it is extremely easy to avoid that with
a simple:
#ifndef O_TEXT
#define O_TEXT 0
#endif
..resulting in code which is just as portable (some might argue more portable
because it will actually perform _properly_ on a wider number of systems).
Your arguments are therefore not only egocentric, but quite simply incorrect.
-alex
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Stewart - riche@crl.com - Richelieu @ Diversity University MOO
http://www.crl.com/~riche
"For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."