Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Just 8 bits out
Message-ID: <304@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 88 17:40:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: auspex.304
References: <10346@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <666@mtxinu.UUCP> <326@pvab.UUCP> <17@auspex.UUCP> <3985@encore.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 30

>Unfortunately, 4.3BSD (and SunOS up to 3.5) has a bug in the implementation
>of PASS8.  Cooked input liternal next processing `quotes' a character
>by setting the 8th bit.  Thus, by turning on PASS8 and then inputing
>something innocuous like ^Vx, a read will really return 'x'|0200.  This
>makes PASS8 somewhat useless for input of multi-lingual character sets,

Well, not completely useless; the work-around (admittedly grotty) is not
to use ^V.

However, what makes it much less useful is the fact that turning PASS8
on doesn't give you an 8-bit *output* path, so the system won't be able
to print - or even echo - those nice 8-bit characters....

>not to mention making the csh/sh barf (they expect 7 bits only).

...since they also use the 8th bit internally for quoting characters.

>This isn't fixed in 4.3BSD-Tahoe.

Although it is presumably fixed in the future POSIX-compliant BSD tty
driver (right, Marc?).  I don't know whether they'll fix the Bourne or C
shells then or not.

> It is SunOS4.0.

The tty driver problem is fixed (since it is completely different
internally).  The "sh" problem is also fixed (since it uses the S5R3.1
Bourne shell, which no longer uses the 8th bit for quoting).  The "csh"
problem is not fixed in SunOS 4.0 (although it may be fixed in a future
release).