Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Binary I/O on stdin/stdout?
Message-ID: <1988Apr24.000016.2439@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <7678@brl-smoke.ARPA>, <281@quequeg.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 88 00:00:16 GMT

> 	... it's always been my impression
> that UNIX was designed to make no distinction between binary and ASCII
> (say) data...  Why is this a problem now?  ...

The key point here is that X3J11 is standardizing C, not Unix.  X3J11 must
define a standard that is implementable on non-Unix systems, some of which
insist that text and binary i/o are very different animals.
-- 
"Noalias must go.  This is           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
non-negotiable."  --DMR              | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry