Extending FileList with CrLf

Jimmie Houchin jhouchin at texoma.net
Mon Aug 4 12:24:24 UTC 2003


Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> Colin Putney <cputney at wiresong.ca> is writing in support of
> the "dumb"-defaults-for-text-streams idea.
> 
> Off-hand, I can't think of *any* use I've ever had for reading
> text files where I wouldn't want the "smart" defaults.
> 
> So much is this so that I use my own C library which does exactly this.
> 
> Any time I care about what exactly the bytes are, or indeed whether
> line terminator bytes as such even exist, it's a binary file.
> 
> As earlier noted, the ANSI standard appears to require a Smalltalk
> where line ends are CR+LF to report the CR and LF separately if
> you use #next, but to treat them as one thing if you use #nextLine.

Neither can I.

One thought I did have.
Some word processors have a toggle to make non-printing characters 
viewable. Would such an option be of service to those who believe the 
"smarts" will do harm? If in such situations where it is potentially 
causing problems, in a debugger or file viewer you could push a button 
or select a menu item to toggle a "view line endings".

Just a thought to toss into the ring. :)

Jimmie Houchin



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