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Re: Why would MS want to make XML break on UNIX, Perl, Python,

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Why would MS want to make XML break on UNIX, Perl, Python, etc ?
• From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 08:02:08 -0800
• In-reply-to: <013901c18912$581fcbe0$4bc8a8c0@A...>
• References: <013901c18912$581fcbe0$4bc8a8c0@A...> <5C39F806F9939046B4B1AFE652500A3A251A0B@R...>

Rick Jelliffe  wrote:
>
> Sure, lets make XML unsuitable for use in UNIX pipes by allowing ^D.
> And for Perl and Python text-processing programs that use standard in and
> expect EOF (^D or ^Z).

On Unix, ^D is only interpreted as an end-of-file signal
when it's typed at a terminal, not when it's stored in a file
or transmitted over a socket or pipe.  Similarly for
^C, ^Z, ^\, ^S, ^Q, and other control characters; these have
no special meaning as far as the file system or stdio
are concerned.

CP/M and MS-DOS on the other hand *do* interpret ^Z as an EOF
character in text files.  CP/M doesn't keep track of file sizes
in bytes, only the number of blocks, so it needs an in-band EOF
indicator.  Some MS-DOS utilities inherited this convention from
CP/M (TYPE, EDLIN.COM) but Windows seems to have abandoned it;
EDIT.COM, NOTEPAD.EXE, and WORDPAD.EXE all have no trouble editing
text files with ^Z's in them.


--Joe English

  jenglish@f...

• References:
  • Why would MS want to make XML break on UNIX, Perl, Python, etc ?
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
  • RE: Some comments on the 1.1 draft
    • From: "Michael Rys" <mrys@m...>

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