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From: rb@cc.ic.ac.uk (Robin Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re GNUdiff sources for MSDOS
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.120256.10979@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 4 Sep 90 12:02:56 GMT
Sender: news@cc.ic.ac.uk (USENET News System)
Reply-To: rb@cc.ic.ac.uk (Robin Becker)
Organization: Imperial College Computer Center, London, UK
Lines: 25

Hi, I submitted the recent CBIP GNUdiff for MSDOS.  I also sent the
patches out on gnu.utils.bug.  I am willing to post the actual sources
there too.  My patches are apparently too complex and cause some
problems when I try to apply using L Wall's patch prg.  J Thiel has
also pointed out a bug in the version I sent to CBIP.  This concerns
the use of control+Z as an eof marker.  These problems do not occur
with a version for MSDOS/OS2 posted recently by K. Uwe Rommel.  I have
now got this latter version and find that there are bugs or features
in this one too.  The problem comes from MSDOS's over supply of
line terminators.  In my version files are read in binary mode and
this allows easy and correct checking of both binary and text files
except in certain cases involving CTL+Z at the end of the file. Rommel's
version reads in text mode and may give incorrect answers on binary
files differing in length and or CRLF pairs. This version basically
ignores anything after CTLZ and maps all CRLF's to LF.
There's no easy way to say what the correct behaviour should be for
a program like diff when files contain CTLZ and differ in say line
terminators.

	Any ideas welcome

		Robin Becker

If God had meant us to use MSDOS he would've given us the extra
head nobody seems to want.