From: Steven Jenkins <steven.jenkins@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T08:57:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Trouble with binary files?

Hal Fulton wrote:
> True, but let's be fair.
> 
> MSDOS stole many things from Unix, such as the notion of a
> hierarchical directory structure and the use of < > | at the
> shell level. (Many things were incompletely stolen, unfortunately.)
> 
> The binmode/textmode distinction came from Unix. At that time
> Unix had an EOF character of control-D (which explains the ^D we
> still type occasionally at the terminal).

No. Unix never distinguished between text and binary files. Unix did 
(and does) interpret ASCII EOT (ctrl-d) as an end-of-input indicator for 
terminal devices, but it never used any in-band character to mark the 
end of a file. The EOT never got past the terminal driver, and was never 
delivered to an application.

Steve