On Sunday 18 September 2011, Alan Curry wrote: > [...] if you believed that having a > "text file"/"binary file" distinction is a good idea at all. Which I > don't.
Yep, we should look for the guys who invented O_TEXT and CRLF to give them a whipping. But the only thing why I hijacked this thread is this from the manpage on POSIX systems: -b, --binary read in binary mode -t, --text read in text mode (default) which is IMO confusing though it's correct because it makes no difference (except printing ' ' or '*'). First time I've read it I thought "WTF, are they emulating O_TEXT/CRLF crap by default or what?" I simply wanted to calculate md5sum from files but the manpage let me think that it does something odd per default. So I thought about using --binary always from now and re-checking all my existing md5sums. Finally I've noticed that the whole time I've thought about this was completely wasted. cu, Rudi