Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Planning a Workgroup
Possible Problems Exchanging Data Between HP-UX and PCs
Chapter 2132
Possible Problems Exchanging Data Between
HP-UX and PCs
No matter how you share data between HP-UX systems and PC’s, there
are several important things you must consider related to operating
system and computer architecture:
• Differences in how PC’s, Apple Macintosh computers, and HP-UX
systems handle the end-of-line condition in ASCII text files.
• “Big Endian” versus “Little Endian” computer architecture.
ASCII End-of-Line Problems
Whenever you exchange data between Microsoft operating systems,
Apple Macintosh operating systems, and HP-UX systems, you might run
into problems related to the different ways each of these systems
determines the end-of-line (EOL) condition in ASCII text files.
The following table shows which characters each of the operating
systems use to determine the end of lines in an ASCII text file:
Many file transfer utilities automatically translate the end-of-line
characters for you, but it is possible that you will see one or more of the
following problems:
• Lines with (^M) characters appended to them when editing a file in
HP-UX that originated on a Microsoft based operating system.
• Line feeds with no carriage returns (text runs off of the right side of
the screen).
Table 2-10 Operating System End-of-Line Characters
Operating System Determines End-of Line with:
HP-UX line-feed character (LF)
Macintosh OS carriage-return character (CR)
Microsoft based Operating
Systems (DOS, WINDOWS
95, NT, etcetera)
carriage-return character
immediately followed by a line-feed
character (CR) (LF)