RE: The future of UTF-8

From: jfieber@indiana.edu
Date: Fri Jul 23 1999 - 11:50:25 EDT


On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Paul Dempsey (Exchange) wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gianni Mariani [mailto:gianni@corp.webtv.net]
> >
> > The issue I have with BOM's is that if I have 2 "plain text"
> > files and I do this kind of operation:
> >
> > type appendfile >> oldfile
> >
> > It's not guarenteed to work unless the consuming application
> > processes multiple BOMS ...
>
> The reason this is not guaranteed to work is because the command processor
> that's doing "type" with redirection doesn't know about the file formats.
> It's the command processor that's defective, NOT the use of BOM/file
> signature.

And if oldfile happens to be a sequential access file, a tape for
example, the command processor rewinds to the beginning of the
file, reads the BOM if it exists, seeks back to the end of the
file, then somehow arranges to signal to the application the
format that it should write its standard output should be? Even
if you can avoid changing the individual applications by sticking
a byte-flipper downstream of the "write" system call, determining
the file format via a BOM is not always going to be a reasonable
thing to do.

-john



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