Re: bin/58014: wc no longer works with binary files

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/58014; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/58014: wc no longer works with binary files
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2024 16:50:02 +0700

     Date:        Sat,  9 Mar 2024 07:50:00 +0000 (UTC)
     From:        michael.cheponis%gmail.com@localhost
     Message-ID:  <20240309075000.E456A1A9241%mollari.NetBSD.org@localhost>
 
   | when 'wc' is given input from a binary file, it now gives the error:
   |
   | wc: hello: invalid byte sequence
 
   | (Assuming 'hello' is a binary file)
 
 wc without flags needs to count characters.   What is a character depends
 upon your locale settings.  Do
 
 	LC_ALL=C wc hello
 
 (or prefix that with "env" if you're a csh user) and it will work.
 
   | wc works as one would expect on arm64.  This error only shows up on amd64
 
 More likely your default locale (LANG, LC_CTYPE or LC_ALL) is different in
 the two cases.
 
 I am not sure that it makes sense to attempt count characters, lines, or
 words, in a binary file - what would the answers mean?    If you were looking
 to get the size of the file, wc is not the right tool.
 
 I see no bug here, nor any real need to explain that a "word count" program
 isn't intended to be sane on non word/character containing files in the
 manual page.