Eric Blake wrote: > According to Jim Meyering on 3/25/2009 3:57 PM: >>> and the extra * breaks the check. I'd really like to switch md5sum and >>> friends to match Linux output when O_BINARY, and add a different marker >>> character (but what?) when summing a file in O_TEXT mode, since generally >>> you WANT binary mode to be the default. Thoughts? >> >> I see what you mean, but what about people who use -b on Linux. >> They'd still have to get the "*". > > People who use -b on Linux would see no change in behavior, because there, > like any other sane system, text and binary mode files are > indistinguishable, so there is no need for a marker.
Right, the *checksum values* would not change, but currently, these tools always print the "*" marker with an explicit -b: $ :|sha1sum -b da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 *- so I'm afraid we'll have to retain that behavior. >> Seems like it'd be hard to arrange such a change >> without causing too much disruption. > > It seems to me that only platforms like Cygwin would be impacted. In > fact, one of the commits that impacts binary mode (4d87cd7, back in 2001) > is attributed to Chris Faylor, who was the person responsible for porting > coreutils to cygwin back in the days where the cygwin community was not > very sure about text vs. binary decisions; since then, the cygwin > community has stabilized to preferring binary over text as a default. > > For md5sum -c purposes, we will have to continue accepting * in files that > we validate. But for generation purposes, it seems like we should > generate space (binary, and make it the default on cygwin) or a new marker > (text, when requested, and only on platforms where it matters). And since > the BSD format is different altogether, it seems like only GNU md5sum > would be impacted by a change in the marker character. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
