Why binary mode?

[Eric Blake]

> This is, what I expect, after reading the Cygwin FAQ:
> "When processing in text mode, [...] written to the file [...] 
> you in fact get "Hello\r\n". Upon reading this combination, 
> the \r is removed [...]".
> Why is it in fact not removed when reading with cat?

The FAQ is outdated.  Would you care to volunteer to help
maintain it?  Reading the NEWS for coreutils, cat was changed
upstream in the last two years or so to always be binary-only,
to more closely comply with POSIX rules that state that
cat must operate on all file types, not just text files.
If cat used default mode, it would corrupt true binary
files that lived in text mounts.

-- 
Eric Blake
volunteer cygwin coreutils maintainer

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