Re: textutils-2.1/src/split.c

[Eric Blake]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Please keep replies on the list.  That way, when a developer takes a
vacation (as I just did), you are still likely to get a response in a
reasonable amount of time; not to mention that others that have a similar
question in the future will be able to search the archives.

According to François Boutines on 5/12/2006 8:36 AM:
> 
> 
> On 5/12/06, *Eric Blake* wrote:
> 
>     >
>     > Nothing really serious but in textutils-2.1/src/split.c
>     > There is a 0xFF character at the beginning of line 17
> 
>     Thanks for the report.  However, textutils is QUITE old; it has
>     been subsumed by coreutils, and the latest stable release, 5.94,
> 
> 
> Yes I figured that out just after sending you that mail, sorry.
> 
>     does not have this bug.  See the release announcement here:
>     http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-02/msg00078.html

Actually, between the time you wrote, and the time that I read your email,
the latest stable release changed to 5.96:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils-announce/2006-05/msg00001.html

> 
> 
> But the problem remains (maybe on my side)  I found the very same
> character in
> 
> coreutils-5.94/src/cksum.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/comm.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/ln.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/nl.c
> coreutils-5.94 /src/pr.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/split.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/uniq.c
> coreutils-5.94/src/wc.c
> 
> do you want me to do an exhaustive search ?
> 
> Sincerely,
> fra.

According to François Boutines on 5/13/2006 12:24 PM:
>
> Ok excuse me, I should have said Scite (the SCIntilla based Text Editor)
> shows me a black boxed [FF] at this place.
>
> A quick hexdump of the file gives in fact 0x0C (0x0A).

0x0C is also written as ^L or \f, and 0x0A is your standard \n.

>
> I was going a bit crazy about that. After checking in both tar.gz and
> bz2 achrives, the sums, even trying hard on Windows (with Scite again=).
>
> What's funny however, is that Windows console (notepad editor, etc)
> displays a Ankh in place of this character...
>
> Bye,
> François.

According to François Boutines on 5/13/2006 12:26 PM:

> PS : By the way I found it too in the GNU C Compiler sources (please
> don't laugh)

The character you are referring to is ^L (control-L), also known as the
formfeed ASCII character (or \f in C strings).  It is a valid whitespace
character in C source code, and in olden days, was used to tell printers
to do a form feed to visually distinguish between distinct sections of a
file by starting new pages.  If your editor does not display it properly,
then use a better editor.  If your compiler does not compile it, then
report that bug to your compiler vendor, and give us more information
about what your compiler is and what error message it is giving.  But it
is not a bug in coreutils nor in gcc to use this character; in fact, using
^L is encouraged by the GNU coding standards, in the last paragraph of
this section: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Formatting

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.1 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEcwm384KuGfSFAYARApvzAJ9b6mCk+ShpsKat5Qejtq570FyitwCguCOv
mZthvNPBOr/6n6mSp/c2EC0=
=fxui
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----