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From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.text.tex
Subject: DVItoPS on DECstation
Summary: fopen(xyz, "rb") doesn't work on DECstation
Keywords: fopen, binary-mode
Message-ID: <1990Oct13.204721.8027@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 13 Oct 90 20:47:21 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 22

I was recently compiling the TeX PostScript driver program dvitops
on a DECstation,
and was surprised to find that the compiler didn't like
	fopen(filename, "rb");
It didn't object at compile-time,
but simply failed to open the file (returning NULL).
(There was no problem once all the "rb"'s and "wb"'s
were changed to "r" and "w".)

I think it's quite a common practice to give the "rb" and "wb"
arguments for Unix/DOS compatibility.
Is this relying on the compiler's generosity?
What does standard C say about it?
And should the DECstation compiler have complained at compile-time,
if it didn't understand the argument?


-- 

Timothy Murphy  

e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie