phil wrote:
>>
>> By the way, what is 'rb' and 'wb' ?
>>
>
> Read Binary, Write Binary
> In Win32 the default is text mode which
> will screw up binary files
>
In fact, this is not just for Windows. Linux / Unix is unusual
using the originally non-standards-conforming line feed ('\n')
character as a line separator. Various different OS's define
text files in different ways. The distinction between binary
and text is a C standards thing, not a Windows goof. Heaven
knows I dislike a lot of what Microsoft has done in the way
of interfering with standard ways of doing things, but their
end-of-line convention is not one of those things. The use
of the extension ".doc" was such a deliberate violation of
standards. Note older Apple files used '\r' as a line separator,
Tenex used \r\n, or \037, some systems used a line count (leaving
no end-of-line string), and so on....
It is a good idea to provide an indication of whether a file
is binary or text to the file system; the clue could guide
compression information.
-Scott David Daniels
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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