Bug 406981

Summary: md5sum has 'text' and 'binary' options which do nothing.
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: David Woodhouse <dwmw2>
Component: coreutilsAssignee: Ondrej Vasik <ovasik>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 8CC: twaugh
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OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2008-01-26 18:16:12 UTC Type: ---
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Description David Woodhouse 2007-11-30 21:37:53 UTC 
The 'text' and 'binary' options to md5sum do nothing, and are confusing. Perhaps
we can't remove them, in case people have scripts which use them -- but we
should at least make sure that 'md5sum --help' and the man page make it clear
that they do nothing on real computers.
Comment 1 Ondrej Vasik 2008-01-26 18:16:12 UTC 
It is not always true that they do nothing. They do nothing on GNU system -
where text and binary file style is the same. More detailed informations about
those options are in 'info md5sum' (in some cases is necessary to use both - man
and info pages - coreutils have usually more informations on info pages). Anyway
- those options are not depricated even in the latest upstream release and are
used for compatibility with systems where binary and text differ(like MS-DOS). I
don't think that it is useful to create patch which will only remove all the
text about -t / -b option from man,info and help page and to keep it forever in
Fedora package - because I doubt that will get accepted by upstream. It could be
IMHO even more confusing for users(if options -t/-b are accepted, but not shown
in man/info/help). So closing NOTABUG, but feel free to add your comments (maybe
it could be more helpful to add something to man/help page what will say that
text and binary options will have same output on GNU system).