[Gambas-user] gambas3 search/replace global - really inconvenient

[Doriano Blengino]

Jussi Lahtinen ha scritto:
>> Yes, but how can I detect a "binary" file?
>>     
>
>  I'm not sure what would be easy way to do it.
>
>  Gedit gives following error message from binary files:
>  "gedit has not been able to detect the character encoding.
>  Please check that you are not trying to open a binary file.
>  Select a character encoding from the menu and try again."
>
>  So, maybe with "file" command?
>  I think there should be some library for this, as so many programs
> needs this kind of functionality
>  (Ubuntu Desktop, browsers, editors, ... ).
>
>  Or, if file has ".dat" etc at end, it is considered as binary.
>   
Gedit says so (unable to...) because it tries to convert the file 
contents to unicode in order to display it. It tries different 
conversions (configurable if one wants to) until success or fail. This 
method is very effective, even if not particularly elegant. KDE has some 
library call, I believe, which can deduct the correct type of a file by 
peeking at its contents, similarly at file(1) unix command. I don't know 
if this function is part of KDE or QT (probably the former).

Using the file extension to gather information about a file is 
deprecated in unix, while using the file(1) command would add another 
dependency to gambas, and would require a routine to parse the file(1) 
output. Moreover, there are certain kinds of file which are plain text 
files, but have other special meanings, like the graphics file of type 
"can't remember... pbm/pgm/ppm? "; even postscript/pdf files can be 
plain text.

Perhaps, trying to convert to unicode could be the more effective way 
for an IDE.

Regards,
Doriano