1003.2 Command Groups

[Moderator, John Quarterman]

From: seismo!hadron!jsdy at sally.utexas.edu (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Date: 10 Jan 87 02:20:18 GMT
Reply-To: jsdy at hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA

In article <6783 at ut-sally.UUCP> hoptoad!gnu at lll-crg.arpa (John Gilmore) writes:
>I suggest that "cpio" be excluded.  Maybe they'll stop distributing
>System V on byte-order-dependent cpio tapes if it becomes non-standard.
>Volume-Number: Volume 9, Number 7

As I understand it, cpio as it currently stands is ASCII (not binary),
in a perfectly understandable format (reasonable byte-by-byte order)
on magnetic tape or byte-oriented file.  The problem is with magtape
interfaces that assume, e.g., little-endian order on a big-endian
machine; and transform
	byte0
	byte1
	byte2
	byte3
to
	byte1 | byte0 | byte3 | byte2
instead of
	byte0 | byte1 | byte2 | byte3
(the classic NUXI problem).
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy at hadron.COM (not yet domainised)

Volume-Number: Volume 9, Number 16