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No you don’t. It’s a holdover from when files were on tapes. The logic is all inverted too. Record separators were at the beginning of a record. Group and unit
by wombatpm 3y ago
No you don’t. It’s a holdover from when files were on tapes. The logic is all inverted too. Record separators were at the beginning of a record. Group and unit separators could then be nested. You really needed a spec for whatever document you were trying to makt
- rightbyte 3y agoIt doesn't matter if the sentinel byte is after or before each record. Having it before is nice for syncing byte streams.
- wombatpm 3y agoIt matters when you trying to roundtrip the data through a text editor because existing tools balk at a 300MB file with a single line.
- Repulsion9513 3y agoYou need a "spec" just the same for a CSV: does it have headers, is there a consistent column ordering, etc. Control characters work the exact same as commas and newlines, but you don't have to worry about escaping them because (unless your data is binary or recursive) the control characters won't show up in the data!
- jdougan 3y agoDo you have a reference to how this worked?