[Info-vax] wrong file format

[Dirk Munk]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/29/20 9:21 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Den 2020-12-29 kl. 14:35, skrev Phillip Helbig (undress to reply):
>>> In article <rsfarr$smk$1 at dont-email.me>, Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl>
>>> writes:
>>>
>>>>> I tried for about 45 minutes---all the suggestions posted here!  It 
>>>>> was
>>>>> about 100 MB, so not all were quick to check.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the end, I managed to transfer it again (don't ask!) and somehow,
>>>>> magically, it was OK.
>>>>>
>>>> I've dealt with problems like these before, usually caused by
>>>> applications that were not written for VMS.
>>>>
>>>> You need to have a bit of a feeling for the different file types of VMS
>>>> to fix these problems, but if you have that, it's very simple to solve
>>>> these little puzzles.
>>>
>>> I don't know how many times I've used SET FILE/ATTR or CONVERT or TECO
>>> to fix things like this.  I can usually look at the contents, look at
>>> DIR/FULL, and see what needs to be done if they don't match, but this
>>> was somehow different.
>>>
>>
>> Nice that it was fixed! And no, I do not belive in magic... :-)
> 
> 
> And, just so people don't think, based on earlier comments, that
> Unix is somehow immune, I frequently have to remove "^M" characters
> from text files on Unix. Unix's only saving grace in this regard is
> that the solution is trivial.  :-)
> 
> bill
> 
No, of course Unix is not immune. Using <lf> or <cr> (Windows) as record 
terminator is a rather silly idea. It means that you can't use those 
characters in a record, and you have to scan the contents of a file for 
those characters. Simply writing the length of a record at the beginning 
of that record is far better solution.