Re: Text file type hint proposal for filexfer

[Albert Lunde <atlunde%panix.com@localhost>]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 04:47:56AM +0200, denis bider wrote:
> My above proposal is ill-conceived only if there is a platform where:
> * file type (text/bin) is not determined, and
> * line endings are not one of LF/CR or a combination (CRLF, LFCR).
> 
> If anyone is aware of such a platform, please let me know. If there isn't one
> though, I suggest the server shouldn't have to support SSH_FXF_TEXT if file
> type isn't determined. The client can read binary and convert line endings if
> it so pleases.

If your are looking for cases that are unlike Unix semantics, I'd
suggest looking at the IBM mainframe operating systems: CMS,
TSO, MVS, etc.  One of the cases that appears there is fixed-length
records with no delimiters in the binary representation.
This may be blocked (though that's more common on tape devices).

I think there are also variable-length records with a none-of-
the-above line representation.

There are various file attributes, but I wouldn't promise
that there are no cases where the file format is ambiguous.
(And of course, the default encoding was EBCDIC.)
(I, thankfully, haven't had to work on those systems for several
years, so I can't provide too many details.)