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To: python-list@python.org
From: Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Python MSI not installing, log file showing name of a Viatnemese communist revolutionary
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 11:25:18 -0400
Organization: IISS Elusive Unicorn
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On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:30:06 -0500, Mark H Harris <harrismh777@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:

>    Well, and now that I'm thinking about this again, since we have 
>unicode, maybe we should have an entire set of standard "file" 
>delimiters for flat-files.
>
>    But the bottom line (pun intended) is that I just want to suck the 
>lines in, and I only want the system to have to handle the delimiters; 

	What "system"... as I understand the UNIX/C stream concept, there are
no "system" delimiters -- it is up to the application program to determine
how to respond to special characters.

	Maybe you'd prefer VMS FORTRAN segmented records -- which encoded
start-of-record and end-of-record bits at the OS level, while writing
blocks of (as I recall -- been 15 years since I had to parse a FORTRAN text
file in a non-compatible language) no more than 256-bytes. A long text
record then would something like:
01lots of text
00carrying over to more blocks
00until finally getting to
10the end block.

	A short line would have both start and end markers
11a short line

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82final/6443/6443pro_021.html#subhead_segrec_type

implies unformatted (binary) files, but I'm fairly certain I've seen text
contents too (maybe written as unformatted).

	To get a "C-style" file one had to go out of their way to specify a
stream mode, what the line end character would be, and for formatted
output, often a "carriagecontrol" specification when opening the file (as I
recall that activated newline, linefeed, tab, and formfeed behaviors on
output files).
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/