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From: bruce@cs.su.oz (Bruce Janson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: diff 8-bit behaviour
Summary: But is it safe, Dustin?
Message-ID: <1186@cluster.cs.su.oz>
Date: 7 Sep 90 08:17:31 GMT
Sender: news@cluster.cs.su.oz
Lines: 38

In article <1990Sep6.220013.25777@sobeco.com> lamy@sobeco.com (j.lamy) writes:
>In <41203@mips.mips.COM> rogerk@mips.COM (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes:
>
>>			[...] On extended-character-set files, use /bin/diff,
>>not /bsd43/bin/diff.
>
>Not quite.  /bin/diff lacks context diffs, which I'd deem essential (esp. for
>generating patches, rcsdiff et al. in a Latin1-ish environment).  
>
>I appreciate very much the effort towards 8-bit cleanliness on the sys V side,
>and the fact that the 4.50 BSD environment has shown itself to be quite
>complete so far.  I just hope worthwhile pieces of the BSD stuff get cleaned
>up too and not simply written off as hopeless junk, or that (SVR4 helping)
>the functionality migrates into the mainstream versions.

I suppose it depends on whether MIPSCo intend their bsd43 stuff to be a
faithful reproduction of 4.3BSD or, instead, to be what you (and I as well
in this instance) consider an improvement over 4.3BSD.
Remember, there may be quite complicated shell scripts Out There
that rely on the fact that 4.3BSD diff blows up in a particular way on
files which contain bytes which have their high bits set, although I
doubt there would be many.
My vote goes with the "faithful emulation" school of thought: if they
want to fix bugs in 4.3BSD then I ask that they put the improved
environment under /bsd43_with_mips_enhancements rather than /bsd43.

Cheers,
bruce.

Bruce Janson
Basser Department of Computer Science
University of Sydney
Sydney, N.S.W., 2006
AUSTRALIA

Internet:	bruce@basser.cs.su.oz.au
Telephone:	+61-2-692-3264
Fax:		+61-2-692-3838