Re: Illegal characters/ .LSP files

[haible (Bruno Haible)]

Some DOS and OS/2 users (Mr. Bishop being one of them) have been affected
by an editor which appends Ctrl-Z to text files, the OS/2 "enhanced" editor
for example.

Richard Shepherd proposes:

> However OS/2 CLisp should take files created with an OS/2 editor---
> otherwise how could an OS/2-ite survive?

Ctrl-Z was used as EOF character 10 years ago. I think it dates back to
operating systems like CP/M which didn't store a file's length in bytes,
only its size in disk blocks. It is of no use at all nowadays.

> This is because Unix takes ^D as eof while dos takes ^Z (I think!).

Yes, with the distinction that Unix doesn't save the Ctrl-D in the file.

My advice is to use an editor which does not append this prehistoric
character to your files. Arne Larsson mentioned one, and there are many
more good editors around.

Only if I can load the clisp executable into an editor, save it, and it
comes out unmodified, only then I consider that editor usable for
day to day work.


                    Bruno Haible
                    haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de