From: YANAGAWA Kazuhisa <kjana@...4lab.to>
Date: 2003-09-20T12:24:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Trouble with binary files?

In Message-Id: <3F6BB6FB.3020204@hypermetrics.com>
Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

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

For ANSI-C compliance.  From fopen(3) of FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE:

     The mode string can also include the letter ``b'' either as a third char-
     acter or as a character between the characters in any of the two-charac-
     ter strings described above.  This is strictly for compatibility with
     ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (``ISO C89'') and has no effect; the ``b'' is ignored.

I believe most of Unix like platforms stand on a similar position.


-- 
kjana@dm4lab.to                             September 20, 2003
A man is known by the company he keeps.