From: Daniel Kelley <news-1064024969@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T11:41:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Trouble with binary files?

>>>>> "Hal" == Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

    Hal> Steven Jenkins wrote:
    >> 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.

    Hal> If Unix never distinguished between text and binary files,
    Hal> what was the binary mode flag for?

I recall that the whole ^Z terminator from CP/M and the fact that file
sizes were always multiples of 128 bytes (saving 7 bits in a size
field being important at the time), so a text file needed a special
character to mark the end of the text. MSDOS carried that "tradition"
on, to ease porting of CP/M applications to DOS, and, well, saving bits
was important at that time, at least it *seemed* to be important!

d.k.


-- 
Daniel Kelley - San Jose, CA
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