Peter Kirk scripsit:Well, perhaps this needs to be read as disproof by reductio ad absurdum. I have shown it to be absurd to consider files to consist of one or more lines of text separated by LS, most obviously because it becomes impossible to tell whether the last line is intended to be complete or not. But Kent did imply this model of file structure when he wrote "And LS it's a separator, not a terminator, so EOF has to be a line terminator."
But if two files each consist of one or more lines of text separated by LS (but with no final LS), when they are concatenated, surely LS must be added as a separator. Similarly with paragraphs and PS.
But your protasis is a petitio principii. Files may or may not consist of lines of text: a file may contain less than one line.
Way to avoid this absurd conclusion: redefine LS and PS as line and paragraph terminators, to be used at end of file when (as is normal) this corresponds to a line or paragraph end.
No doubt this is the de facto position. (The *true* de facto position, of course, is not to use LS or PS at all.)
But according to Kent's latest posting (my emphasis), "The *first* and last lines in a text file may well be partial." How can one tell, in any encoding, whether the first line is partial? And it seems that, in a file where LS is used as a separator not a terminator, EOF is a line terminator except when it isn't.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
