Re: [MacPerl] Porting Un*x perl scripts to MacPerl for CGI

["Paul J. Schinder" <schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us>]

Bart Lateur <bart.mediamind@tornado.be> writes:
}Kent Cowgill wrote:
}
}> Being fully cognizant of the fact that .pdf aren't text files by any
}> stretch of the imagination; their _file type code_ is actually 'TEXT' (I
}> suppose I wasn't clear on that point in my previous message).
}
}PDF-files are in fact some sort of Postscript files, so my imagination
}doesn't need that much stretching.
}

>From what I've read, PDF is some sort of *Level II* Postscript.  Take a
look at one sometimes with a good text editor that handles the high bit
characters in some reasonable way, like Emacs.  PDF files fit any
reasonable definition of binary data files.  There's not a chance that
you'd want -T to tell you that it's text.

}Even though not intended for human consumption, they *are* indeed some
}kind of text files.

Not for any reasonable definition of the word "text", unless the term is to
lose any meaning entirely.  Since Perl's roots are deep in the soil of
American cultural imperalism (yay team!), "text" is probably intended to
mean printable 7-bit characters, although the actual algorithm might take
ISO-latin into account.  Don't know for sure.

}
}As Postscript files sometimes do, they may contain binary blocks.

They *always* contain binary blocks.  In fact, they are almost *entirely*
binary blocks.  Take a look at some sometime.

}
}--
}		Bart Lateur
}		Gent (Ghent, Gand),
}		Belgium,
}		Europe,
}		3rd planet from the sun.


---
Paul J. Schinder
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771
schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us