I am learning C from the K&amp;R handbook. I know (and read) that 'b' in a fopen call signals binary access. The book then goes on to say that this (binary access) is meaningless on UNIX systems.  The inference is that it is meaningful on Windows.  My question is, why does Windows make this distinction between text and binary and UNIX doesn't. Also, what is the distinction?  I found some things that come close to answering it, but still don't quite satisfy me:      Thanks in advance.
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What translation occurs when writing to a file that was opened in text mode that does not occur in binary mode? Specifically in MS Visual C.  unsigned char buffer[256]; for (int i = 0; i &lt; 256; i++) buffer[i]=i; int size  = 1; int count = 256;   Binary mode:  FILE *fp_binary = fopen(filename, "wb"); fwrite(buffer, size, count, fp_binary);   Versus text mode:  FILE *fp_text = fopen(filename, "wt"); fwrite(buffer, size, count, fp_text);
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Pretty simple question: In Linux, why does Python require the line   #!/usr/bin/python   at the start of a python file, since Windows doesn't?  What does it do? 'cause the description "Links to Python" is a bit vague...
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I've just read this  from Reddit.  They mention and and or being "Alternative Tokens" to &amp;&amp; and ||  I was really unaware of these until now. Of course, everybody knows about the , but and and or? Since when? Is this a recent addition to the standard?  I've just checked it with Visual C++ 2008 and it doesn't seem to recognize these as anything other than a syntax error. What's going on?
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Recently back to Linux from another operating system I noticed a file called [ which seems strange to me.  What is it for?  $ ls -l /usr/bin | head -2 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       39552 Nov  3 14:44 [   I'm using Ubuntu 15.04
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I read this up on this website and it doesn't make sense.       When UNIX was first written, /bin and   /usr/bin physically resided on two   different disks: /bin being on a   smaller faster (more expensive) disk,   and /usr/bin on a bigger slower disk.   Now, /bin is a symbolic link to   /usr/bin: they are essentially the   same directory.   But when you ls the /bin folder, it has far less content than the /usr/bin folder (at least on my running system).  So can someone please explain the difference?
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What's the point of the touch command? I know I can create empty files with it, but so is also the case with echo -n.  Otherwise, why would someone need to change the timestamps of a file? Unless to create the false impression about the age of a file, I don't see any other use, and this one is not a legitimate one (from my point of view).
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I am studying for an exam and I am confused as to how canonical vs. non-canonical input/output works in Unix (e.g., curses).  I understand that there is a buffer to which "line disciplines" are applied for canonical input.  Does this mean that the buffer is bypassed for non-canonical input, or does it simply mean that no line disciplines are applied?  How does this process differ for input and output operations?  In the curses programs I have worked with that demonstrate canonical input, the input typed by a user is automatically entered either after a certain number of characters have been typed or a certain amount of time has passed.  Are either of these things considered "line disciplines" or is this something else entirely?
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The example I am thinking of is GNU, which stands for "".  It may be that there are no other examples. And maybe that's the whole joke. I was just wondering.
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I was trying to find how to pass some text to a file without overwriting what's there already using the > command and I realised I don't know what it's called. Searching for right arrow or right chevron or more than command didn't show up anything. I've always just called it pass to.
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When I invoke a system call in user mode,how did the call get processed in OS?  Does it invoke some some executable binary or some standard library?  If yes,what kind of thing it needs to complete the call?
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Why don't you see binary code when you open a binary file with text editor? For example, when I open an image with text editor, I see some weird characters and also some human readable characters; but the image should be encoded in binary.
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Is it possible to use the find command to find all the "non-binary" files in a directory?  Here's the problem I'm trying to solve.  I've received an archive of files from a windows user.  This archive contains source code and image files.  Our build system doesn't play nice with files that have windows line endings.  I have a command line program (flip -u) that will flip line endings between *nix and windows.  So, I'd like to do something like this  find . -type f | xargs flip -u   However, if this command is run against an image file, or other binary media file, it will corrupt the file.  I realize I could build a list of file extensions and filter with that, but I'd rather have something that's not reliant on me keeping that list up to date.  So, is there a way to find all the non-binary files in a directory tree?  Or is there an alternate solution I should consider?
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What is Unix, Linux, Ubuntu?  Are they the same thing or different versions or completely different stuff?  This has always made me confused, any explanation would be great.
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I thought .com is an ancient form for executable, leftover from early MS-DOS days? Why do they use that today in WinSCP? And why only for the CLI version?  I tried asking this in their chat room, but received not a single reply for days. As always.
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What is the ending r for and the leading d for in file permissions on Linux?  Example:  drwxr-xr-x   I know about the user, group, others part, and I know w=write, r=read, x=execute.  But I don't know about the leading d and the trailing r.  Can anyone explain how this works?
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On several Unix servers, I have seen below behavior:   I list all the files using ls -lrt: 3 files are being shown up  I open one of the files using vi editor  I close the open file   Now in some Unix system, I can still see the earlier screen as it is as in point 2 (listing those 3 files, ls -lrt output as it is) whereas on some systems, the text of recently opened file is printed.   I want to know which setting in profile or some *rc file this behavior depends.
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After reading this question , next obvious question on my mind was why '.' and '..' was used to represent current directory and parent directory.  It seems so intuitive now, but any particular reason?