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Re: Binary versus Text

• From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 08:00:25 -0800

> By convention we normally restrict "binary" to files which are not interpretable as streams of characters. [John Cowan]

I have heard that there are languages, in whose alphabet a single
"character" represents a whole word. Therefore, we need to be cautious
in using and interpreting the word "character" as ... well, a
character.

And we could have languages where the "character" is something so
unusual as a musical note, or the representation of a phoneme in an
audio-editor. And the mathematical symbols, and, ... These things
aren't "text", but it would also be gross flattening down to call them
"binary".


Cheers,
Dimitre


On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 6:25 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
>
>
> Distinguishing "text" versus "binary" is important.
>
>
>
> On October 30 we had a discussion titled, "Is the binary file format dead?"
>
>
>
> During that discussion John Cowan made an excellent distinction between binary and text files. I thought it would be useful to summarize the distinction.
>
>
>
> The universe of computer files falls into two categories:
>
>
>
> 1. Binary files
>
> 2. Text files
>
>
>
> By convention we normally restrict "binary" to files which are not interpretable as streams of characters. [John Cowan]
>
>
>
> The word "text" is applied to files which are interpretable as streams of characters.
>
>
>
> Of course any text file is also a binary file, since the class of text files is obtained from the class of binary files by applying restrictions. But it would be confusing to call a text file a binary file; it would be like calling a cat a mammal: correct but imprecise.
>
>
>
>
>
> /Roger




-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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• References:
  • Binary versus Text
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>