bug#9531: md5sum: confusing documentation for file type output

[Alan Curry]

=?UTF-8?Q?R=C3=BCdiger?= Meier writes:
> Or in other words you can never validate a ' ' md5sum unless you know
> about the platform which calculated it.

Not exactly. It works transparently if the appropriate translation was done
at the time of the transfer from the original platform to the current
platform (e.g. FTP'ed in text mode, not binary mode).

If you transferred a text file in binary mode, you have something that's
bitwise identical, but semantically different, so md5sum is right to
complain.

Well, at least the above would apply if you believed that having a
"text file"/"binary file" distinction is a good idea at all. Which I don't.

-- 
Alan Curry