On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 04:43:11PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On Friday, May 3, 2002 at 14:49:11 (-0500), Sean Hager wrote: ]
> > Subject: RE: merge mode for XML
> > > No. Not on extension, but based on *regular expressions*, or at least
> > > shell-style pattern matching expressions. Extensions are too
> > > simplistic. (c.f. CVSROOT/cvswrappers, CVSROOT/cvsignore)
> >
> > Extensions would work fine, pattern matching is overkill.
>
> Neither is suitable or sufficient.
Agreed! I *know* I've had conflicts in CVSROOT/cvswrappers in
the past (having a text file treated as binary because it happens
to have an extension that also signifies some binary format);
just can't remember what they were.
But here are some counterexamples anyway:
- .doc: we all know what M$ thinks it means, but other people
have their own ideas. I've seen text files with .doc
extensions, and I'd bet other word- or document-processors
have used it too
- .cfg: some kind of configuration file ... but it could be
anything from Windows-ini format to XML to pseudo-Lisp to
binary
- .cgi: again, that says how it functions -- in this case,
what its API is -- but says *nothing* about the file format;
CGI "scripts" can be in any language you like, including C
- In general, on *NIX machines where extensions are more a
convention than an OS-mandated thing, people tend to play
fast and loose with them. E.g. one could conceive of a
directory full of files named for Internet domains --
including Australian ones ending in ".au", which is also an
audio format
- And the killer is .bak: can be anything under the sun, of
course. Usually people don't check them in, but it would be
foolish in the extreme to presume they *never* do, and to
make doing so functionally useless
That's just from the A-D part of a list of file extensions. I'm
sure there are lots more conflicts in E-Z.
Oh, and of course there's .sys; even M$ can't decide what that
signifies.
--
| | /\
|-_|/ > Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| | /
Anyone who swims with the current will reach the big music steamship;
whoever swims against the current will perhaps reach the source.
- Paul Schneider-Esleben
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