Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!dcs!wnp
From: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: IEEE 1003.2 (was Re: fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords))
Message-ID: <259@dcs.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 88 12:28:34 GMT
References: <1812@ndsuvax.UUCP> <717@quintus.UUCP> <6518@csli.STANFORD.EDU> <6550@csli.STANFORD.EDU> <145@minya.UUCP> <9137@smoke.BRL.MIL> <33251@think.UUCP> <9154@smoke.BRL.MIL> <396@aber-cs.UUCP> <5203@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: DCS, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 33

In article <5203@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>No archive format that allows any of the following can be considered
>portable:
>
>    ... lines deleted ...
>    lines containing embedded tab characters
>    lines containing control characters
>    lines containing graphic characters (e.g. { } \ |)
>       for which there is no standard EBCDIC convention
>There is no existing portable text archive format.

Well, what is an archive program to do with these instances in order to
achieve portability????

Some DATA is non-portable, and any archive containing such data as a 
result is non-portable, also. That does not make the archive format
non-portable.

Since on some systems, lines containing all of the above are both allowed
and sometimes necessary (certainly for binaries), and archive format
which does not allow them would not be portable.

Unless of course you mean that an archive program should handle such
lines in a manner analogous to uuencode or atob; but why make that part
of the archiver?
>-- 
>Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi


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