Ben Pfaff schreef, Op 20-11-2010 5:34:
Hi. Harry Thijssen, a user of GNU PSPP (software that I
maintain), wrote to me that dos2unix reported that some of the
text files included with PSPP are binary instead of text. I took
a look at the problem and discovered that dos2unix treats the
ASCII FF (formfeed) character as an indication that a file is
binary. Formfeeds are fairly common in GNU software because of
the following paragraph in the GNU coding standards:
Please use formfeed characters (control-L) to divide the
program into pages at logical places (but not within a
function). It does not matter just how long the pages are,
since they do not have to fit on a printed page. The
formfeeds should appear alone on lines by themselves.
I'm appending a patch that changes dos2unix to consider formfeeds
a valid character in text files. I hope that you will consider
applying it or an equivalent in an upcoming dos2unix release.
Thanks,
Ben.
Hi Ben,
I have seen this too a few times, but I didn't know that form feeds are
part of GNU coding standards. I assumed that use of form feed control
characters is not common, so I took no risk and didn't make an exception
for form feeds. There is always the option -f to force conversion.
I include your patch in the next dos2unix version. I don't think there
is a big risk that a binary file is accidentally seen as text file with
this extra exception. Is it OK to mention your name and/or email address
in the ChangeLog? Thanks for the patch.
best regards,
--
Erwin Waterlander
http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/
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