GNU bug report logs - #22838
New 'Binary file' detection considered harmful

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Package: grep;

Reported by: Marcello Perathoner <marcello <at> perathoner.de>

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2016 18:13:01 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

Full log

Message #23 received at 22838 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Marcello Perathoner <marcello <at> perathoner.de>,
 Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>, 22838 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#22838: New 'Binary file' detection considered harmful
Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 10:56:14 -0700

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]
On 02/29/2016 10:54 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> Encoding errors are not characters, but bytes.  A line cannot contain
> encoding errors.  Therefore, a file with encoding errors is not a text file.

Corollary - there exist files which are text files in some locales, but
binary files in others (based on whether the locale interprets the bytes
as an encoding error or as valid characters).

Yes, locale dependencies on standard behavior can be annoying.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org


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This bug report was last modified 8 years and 257 days ago.

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