File 'rb' on non-Windows

Ruby
1

To open binary files, on Windows the statement:
File.new(“myfile”, “rb”)
is required.

The docs just seem to say that the “b” is a Windows-only thing, not what
happens on other platforms. Will the “b” flag just be filtered out on
Linux/OS X?

Best regards,

Jari W.

2

Jari W. wrote:

To open binary files, on Windows the statement:
File.new(“myfile”, “rb”)
is required.

The docs just seem to say that the “b” is a Windows-only thing, not what
happens on other platforms. Will the “b” flag just be filtered out on
Linux/OS X?

Best regards,

Jari W.

On Windows files will usually have line breaks build by the sequence
“\r\n”. When reading such a file in normal mode, the “\r” will be
deleted and not inside the String. When writing data to a file, each
“\n” will be replaced by “\r\n”.

When using “rb” or “wb” on Windows, the data will be unchanged.

On Linux/OS X the line break character in a file is “\n”, so the “b”
mode doesn’t have any effect.

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

3

Jari W. wrote:

To open binary files, on Windows the statement:
File.new(“myfile”, “rb”)
is required.

The docs just seem to say that the “b” is a Windows-only thing, not what
happens on other platforms. Will the “b” flag just be filtered out on
Linux/OS X?

It is ignored on other platforms, yes.

Regards,

Dan

4

Jari W. wrote:

To open binary files, on Windows the statement:
File.new(“myfile”, “rb”)
is required.

The docs just seem to say that the “b” is a Windows-only thing, not what
happens on other platforms. Will the “b” flag just be filtered out on
Linux/OS X?

  1. Different os’s use different characters for newlines.

  2. In Ruby, and other languages, when you read or write a file, ruby
    automatically converts all newlines from any os to: ‘\n’. That way,
    when you write a file, you can have your code write a ‘\n’ to the file
    and ruby will take care of converting the ‘\n’ to the proper newline for
    your system. Likewise, when you read a newline from a file, you can
    assume the newline is a ‘\n’ because ruby will convert the actual
    newline to a ‘\n’. In other words, you can write code that assumes ‘\n’
    is the newline on any os–even though the actual newline for that os may
    be something else.

  3. When you open a file in binary mode, you are directing ruby not to
    do any newline conversions. That means you can no longer assume the
    newlines are ‘\n’. The newlines you read will be the actual newlines
    that are in the file. Similarly, you can no longer write a ‘\n’ to the
    file and expect ruby to convert it to the proper newline for the os. In
    other words, what you read from a file is exactly what’s in the file,
    and what you write to the file is exactly what’s in your write or puts
    statement.

  4. Because newlines on unix are a ‘\n’, ruby doesn’t have to do any
    conversions when you read or write a text file in normal mode.
    Therefore, if you open a file in binary mode on a unix os, which tells
    ruby not to do any conversions, there is no difference. What you read
    from a file is exactly what’s in the file, i.e. the newline in the file
    and what ruby returns to you as the newline are identical, and when you
    write a ‘\n’ to the file, an actual ‘\n’ gets written to the file.

5

On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:59 AM, Daniel B. wrote:

Regards,

Dan

It’s not “ignored”, it just has no effect because there’s no
difference between “binary” mode and the default for Unix-like systems.

-Rob

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]