Xref: utzoo alt.msdos.programmer:2608 comp.os.msdos.programmer:4802 comp.editors:3039 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!davis From: davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu ("John E. Davis") Newsgroups: alt.msdos.programmer,comp.os.msdos.programmer,comp.editors Subject: Nulls and Binary editors (was: Re: EDITORS -> EMACS) Message-ID: Date: 20 Apr 91 22:21:55 GMT References: <1991Apr18.204216.6994@ibmpcug.co.uk> <1991Apr20.211217.11781@cs.cmu.edu> Sender: news@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (John E. Davis) Followup-To: alt.msdos.programmer Organization: "Dept. of Physics, The Ohio State University" Lines: 25 In-reply-to: ralf+@cs.cmu.edu's message of 20 Apr 91 21:12:17 GMT In article <1991Apr18.204216.6994@ibmpcug.co.uk> gmurray@ibmpcug.co.uk (G Murray) writes: } I can't comment on Epsilon, but the main problem that I have noted with }both Brief and EMACS is that they can't handle Nulls. Brief seems to manage }every other possible byte value in a file except for 0x00. Which emacs are you referring to? GNU emacs handles nulls. From what I just read about freemacs, the author claims that it can edit its own binary so I assume it can handle nulls as well. Now for a few thoughts about binary editors: It seems to me that it would be very easy to write a binary editor-- easier than writing an ordinary text editor. I believe that text editors must worry about the appearance of the displayed text whereas this should not be a concern for a binary editor-- just format everything in columns to make it readable. Am I too naive here? It seems that editors which allow binary files to be edited (eg GNU emacs) do not take this approach. I would much rather edit a file which formats the binary characters in nice easy to read columns. -- John bitnet: davis@ohstpy internet: davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu