binary data files

[Tom Neff]

In article <11021 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> scs at adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes:
>Actually, this illustrates another thing it's worth shying away
>from if you can.  The assumption that you can determine, without
>actually reading them, exactly how many characters a file
>contains, can get you in to trouble, although of course it's a
>perfectly valid assumption on Unix systems.  Not so on VMS and
>MS-DOS and doubtless other lesser systems -- stat() or the
 ^^^^^^
>equivalent may only give you an approximation.

MS-DOS has exact filesizes in bytes, and a standard OS call to retrieve
a file's size in bytes.  The poster may have been thinking of CP/M,
but CP/M is not MS-DOS.



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Tom Neff				UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
    "Truisms aren't everything."	Internet: tneff at bfmny0.UU.NET