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Re: [ddlm-group] CIF header

I agree with Brian's suggestion.  Can other participants also indicate
their agreement or alternative suggestions?

James.

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:15 PM, Brian McMahon <bm@iucr.org> wrote:
>>>> Is there a reason why it can't be #!, to make it consistent with other *nix
>>>> based directives.
>
> As James says, #! is normally understood by Unix shells to specify
> an appropriate shell interpreter, not quite what we're aiming for here.
>
> A characteristic initial set of bytes (file 'magic') is often used
> by GUI file managers and other generic file-handling software to
> associate icons or applications (in association with, or sometimes
> competing against, the use of a filename extension). We use this
> approach to identify the type of file uploaded in our submission
> system. It's useful for that initial byte sequence to be (a) short
> to facilitate rapid scanning, (b) specific to an individual file type.
> For that reason we suggested for CIF 1.1 the magic string
>      #\#CIF_1.1
> For CBF it is
>      ###CBF: VERSION
>
> I recommend #\#CIF_2.0 to be consistent with version 1.1 and so that
> generic file magic handling can map all #\#CIF_ strings to files of type
> "cif". (A sophisticated file manager could extend the scan to allow for
> different icons to be associated with version 1.1 and version 2 CIFs.)
> It seems a pity from the viewpoint of neatness that the CIF and CBF
> magic strings aren't more similar in structure.
>
> Brian
>
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 02:09:56PM +0800, Nick Spadaccini wrote:
>>
>> We don't need an extra character, a single hash would suffice, but I guess
>> an extra character my uniquely identify it as the CIF header to a parser,
>> rather than it as just a comment. An extra character also moves you away
>> from an ordinary comment which is smart, to a smart comment which has its
>> own unique tag. I am NOT a fan of smart comments, or comments which can be
>> smart, but they seem to be to modus operandi of many systems.
>>
>> On 20/11/09 1:59 PM, "James Hester" <jamesrhester@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Wouldn't this cause a UNIX-style OS to try to execute 'CIF2' if
>>> someone accidentally typed the filename in a command context?  This is
>>> not a huge problem in that it will otherwise attempt to execute
>>> 'data_xxxx', and only if the file is executable.
>>>
>>> I guess I don't understand why we need an extra character after the
>>> hash.  If we really do need an extra character, why not just another
>>> hash?
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Nick Spadaccini <nick@csse.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>>>> On 30/10/09 11:47 PM, "Joe Krahn" <krahn@niehs.nih.gov> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A directive embedded in an initial comment really does make sense,
>>>>> because it is irrelevant once the correct parser is selected. It might
>>>>> make sense to add a specific 2nd character, similar to the POSIX shell
>>>>> #!. For example, the STAR format could define an initial line beginning
>>>>> with #% as parsing directive rather than just a plain comment. That
>>>>> makes the abuse of a comment line as a bit less of a hack.
>>>>
>>>> Is there a reason why it can't be #!, to make it consistent with other *nix
>>>> based directives.
>>>>
>>>> cheers
>>>>
>>>> Nick
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