Re: [gawk-stable] bug: fatal error when getline from directory

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 00:30:14 +0100
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden, address@hidden
> From:Paolo <address@hidden>
> 
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 06:59:22PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > The definition may be ``broad/vague'', but everybody knows what is a
> > text file: it's a file that contains human-readable text.  Directories
> > don't count.
> 
> please define 'human-readable'.

Consisting of words in some human language.

> POSIX 'text file' is any sequence of chars except for '\0', in 1+ lines
> shorter than LINE_MAX, which is OS/implementation-specific. So you may well
> have a 'text file' which isn't that 'human-readable' at all.

Then all bets are off.

> *I* might agree that dirs aren't "text" nor "binary" files, yet you can 
> open(2)+read(2) a dir without a glitch - you get an EOF.

Being able to read such a file does not mean that processing it with
Gawk will give you anything sensible.