Re: Help and info on line endings

[Larry Jones]

Les Spam writes:
> 
> We have been having trouble with line endings because we check out files 
> on a Linux server and zip them up for download by users who do not have 
> CVS clients. Win9x users end up with line oriented text files that do 
> not parse because the scanner sees one long line.

If you're using the Info-ZIP version of zip, you should use the "-l"
flag to convert the line endings.

> Can anyone explain how/why it is that the DOS line endings are being 
> preserved in these CVS text files?

On Unix-like systems, <CR> is not part of the line ending, it is part of
the line itself.  So, if you have a Unix file with DOS line endings and
commit it, the <CR>s get preserved just like all the rest of the
characters.  If you check that file out on DOS, however, you'll see that
the lines end with <CR><CR><LF> --  the <CR> that's part of the line
followed by the normal DOS line ending, <CR><LF>.  That's almost
certainly *not* what you want.  As others have said, the rule is that
you should always do checkout/checkin on the same kind of system that
you're going to use the files on.  If you can't (or won't) do that, then
it's up to you to handle the line endings yourself.

-Larry Jones

Hey!  What's the matter?  Can't you take a joke?!  It was a JOKE! -- Calvin