[Info-vax] wrong file format

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <rsg97u$1m8$1 at dont-email.me>, Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl>
writes: 

> >>>>> 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.  :-)
>  
> 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.

Nearly every internet application protocol (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, SMTP) specifies
<CR><LF> as the line terminator and nearly every unix-derived application
screws it up at some point it its development. 

                                                                 ---David Jones