On Tuesday, 02/20/2007 at 08:53 EST, Rick Troth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Took that long before I warmed up again to OE. > But now I love it! And I realize that OpenVM and USS *must* be EBCDIC. > But yeah, we have a problem. You mention Java class files copied > around. For me, a killer is NFS mounting: to translate or not? > Might seem easy: If text then translate, or if executable not. > But what about directories with mixed content? No easy solution.
On z/VM, the NFS client and server translate files selectively according to filetypes identified in TCPIP DATA. The user can override it using mount parameters if they desire. z/OS could do the same thing, letting sftp and scp use the same translation settings. Of course, the ssh protocol is extendable and could include channel types specifically designed for file transfer, as opposed to command/response. As to od's display of string "ABC" as C1C2C3, that's just tough. Any program that depends on looking at the internal representation of data on the remote system is doomed anyway. Integers, anyone? Or what about the dozens of ASCII code pages? I'm quite sure I can invent a Windows-to-Unix ssh scenario that will have the same problem. Both are ASCII, but they use different code pages. I mean, ASCII is just shorthand for a set of code pages that share some common attributes. EBCDIC just has a different set of common attributes. Code pages do not apply to binary files. Binaries are, by their very nature, not intended as human-readable text, but as a stream of bytes or records in a format specific to the application that processes them. When you type on the terminal, you are typing text. Commands are text. Respones are text. Any time you deal with text, there notion of translation will surface. Sometimes translations go unnoticed, sometimes they don't. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
