[TriLUG] CR/LF

[Rick DeNatale]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 01:27:58 -0500, Mark Freeze <mfreeze at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just so you guys will know...
> 
> I am transferring the file from the Linux box to Windows via a Samba
> share.  The 'FileSystemWatcher' component of VB.net watches the Samaba
> directory for any change, then starts my series of programs on the
> downloaded file.
> 
> Another thing: (If it matters)
> The amount of cr/lf's vs. cr's or lf's needs to be exact in the
> conversion process.  The files I am downloading are print-image
> medical bills so any stray characters are disastrous to the output.
> GIGO at its fullest.
> 
> Did someone say Samba might perform the conversion ?

Your question prompted me to do a bit of googling, and it seems that
the Samba developers got this as a frequent request, but I don't know
that they ever came up with a satisfactory solution to the problem of
reliably detecting which files should be converted in general. 
Another factor was that apparently lots of DOS/Windows programs
actually are quite happy with files which are delimited by CR instead
of CRLF.

Another complication is what to do about files which might be
partially binary and partially text like a zip or tar file.

Here's a link to a patch which someone cooked up back in 1997 as an
attempt to have samba automatically convert
http://www.davideous.com/samba_crlf/ he also describes the above
problems.