RE: Text file type hint proposal for filexfer

[Richard Whalen <Whalenr%process.com@localhost>]

Yes, it is possible for a VMS application to reliably report on whether
or not a given file is a text file or not.  This information is stored
in the file header (inode in Unix speak).

Our current SFTP implementation uses the file header information to do
on the fly conversion of the various VMS text file formats to a stream
of characters format when transferring text file to a non-VMS system.
This conversion is controlled by an environment variable, so it can be
disabled, though the environment variable can not be set from within the
SFTP session. The down side of the on the fly conversion is that we can
only provide an estimate of the file size for many of the formats.

--------------
Richard Whalen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nisse%lysator.liu.se@localhost [mailto:nisse%lysator.liu.se@localhost]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 9:19 AM
> To: Richard Whalen
> Cc: 'ietf-ssh%netbsd.org@localhost'
> Subject: Re: Text file type hint proposal for filexfer
> 
> 
> Richard Whalen <Whalenr%process.com@localhost> writes:
> 
> > Your impression is correct.  Many text files on VMS do not 
> store the line
> > break sequence.
> 
> Is it possible for a VMS application (in particular, an sftp server on
> VMS), to reliably figure out wether or not given file is a "text file"
> using this record format, or a binary file (whatever that means on
> VMS)?
> 
> That is, can the proposed file mode hint be reliably supported on VMS?
> 
> /Niels
>