Re: md5sum and binary vs. text

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake wrote:
> I really hate the fact that md5sum and friends output * for binary files,
> and blank for text files, when used on cygwin or other platforms where
> O_TEXT matters.  This poor choice of defaults makes 'make
> sc_immutable_NEWS' fail, because md5sum outputs:
>
> fa6cba1740b3f385520c1b54d90859ca *-
>
> and the extra * breaks the check.  I'd really like to switch md5sum and
> friends to match Linux output when O_BINARY, and add a different marker
> character (but what?) when summing a file in O_TEXT mode, since generally
> you WANT binary mode to be the default.  Thoughts?

I see what you mean, but what about people who use -b on Linux.
They'd still have to get the "*".
Seems like it'd be hard to arrange such a change
without causing too much disruption.

To address the failure, I'll probably push this tomorrow:

>From b102ed9ba6e529cc3dcf6be63c95d0f93d5499e0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:49:09 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] tests: don't fail "make syntax-check" on cygwin

* maint.mk (NEWS_hash): Remove trailing " -" or " *-".
* cfg.mk (old_NEWS_hash): Regenerate, removing " -".
Reported by Eric Blake.
---
 cfg.mk   |    2 +-
 maint.mk |    9 ++++++---
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/cfg.mk b/cfg.mk
index c6b6e9b..29a03a7 100644
--- a/cfg.mk
+++ b/cfg.mk
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ gnulib_dir = /gnulib
 # Now that we have better (check.mk) tests, make this the default.
 export VERBOSE = yes

-old_NEWS_hash = fa6cba1740b3f385520c1b54d90859ca  -
+old_NEWS_hash = fa6cba1740b3f385520c1b54d90859ca

 # Ensure that the list of O_ symbols used to compute O_FULLBLOCK is complete.
 dd = $(srcdir)/src/dd.c
diff --git a/maint.mk b/maint.mk
index 5444436..554b90a 100644
--- a/maint.mk
+++ b/maint.mk
@@ -460,9 +460,12 @@ sc_const_long_option:
              echo 1>&2 '$(ME): add "const" to the above declarations'; \
              exit 1; } || :

-NEWS_hash = \
-  $$(sed -n '/^\*.* $(PREV_VERSION_REGEXP) ([0-9-]*)/,$$p' \
-     $(srcdir)/NEWS | grep -v '^Copyright .*Free Software' | md5sum -)
+NEWS_hash =                                                            \
+  $$(sed -n '/^\*.* $(PREV_VERSION_REGEXP) ([0-9-]*)/,$$p'             \
+       $(srcdir)/NEWS                                                  \
+     | grep -v '^Copyright .*Free Software'                            \
+     | md5sum -                                                                
\
+     | sed 's/ .*//')

 # Ensure that we don't accidentally insert an entry into an old NEWS block.
 sc_immutable_NEWS:
--
1.6.2.rc1.285.gc5f54