From: Stefan Mahlitz <stefan@...>
Date: 2007-08-22T16:25:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Test if file is binary ?

Simon Krahnke wrote:
> * Stefan Mahlitz <stefan@mahlitz-net.de> (22:40) schrieb:
> 
>> That's why clearcase (on windows) claimed my pure-ascii xml-file was
>> non-text (and did refuse to check it in). One line exceeded 8000 characters.
> 
> You can't seriously treat a file with lines longer than 8000 characters
> as line oriented. It's far from being readable by a human. You declare
> that file as application/xml.

Maybe this was a bad example. You are right, the xml-file would be best
treated by clearcase as application/xml or text/xml. This did not work
(and I was bitten by this recently - so this strange behaviour was fresh
when I read your email).

But I cannot see the problem with text-files containing long lines. If I
write a single paragraph with more than 1000 or 8000 characters - why
shouldn't this be text?

Why do you think it is not readable?

> One small change in that line will produce a patch of more than 8000
> characters. And if that change is at the end of the line the diff tool
> will have to use 4 pages of memory for the compare.

Sorry, I fail to see your point. Are we really judging whether a file is
text by how much memory pages a diff will take or how many characters a
patch has?

I couldn't find a definition of text except that text means absence of
binary data. This is weak - so I would follow your definition - A text
file is a file which can be read by a human.

>> This is on my personal list of 'bad practices', but it may be
>> appropriate to others.
> 
> I think it's bad practice to declare something with huge lines as text.

Well, I disagree.

But to get (slightly at least) ontopic again, if I would have to detect
whether a file is text I would go with a combination of Robert Klemmes
and Bertram Schrapfs solutions.

Stefan