how can i be certain that a file has copied exactly?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:49:03 -0800, Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
> I also have some very simple and efficient string-matching
> functions [[ for SHORT lines!! ]] and other thing we do very often.
> It was (is?)  throw-away code.  Does it made sense to have a place
> on the web where you can get these kind of canned functions?  I
> have perhaps 20 of these functions named and tagged.  This was, I
> believe, at least one idea behind C++, but at least I have never
> seen any sites that offer C or C++ functions to do ``X''.

There have been efforts in the past to do something like this.

For example, I still remember discovering 'clib' at

  http://mapage.noos.fr/emdel/clib.htm

a few years ago.

It seems a nice idea to build a "personal toolset", but my impression
is that dumping a bunch of functions on a web page is not enough
anymore.  The world has been `spoiled' by open source projects, so if
an effort like this expects to be taken seriously from the world, it
should at least have:

  * A public source repository, with full history, readable from
    everyone and compatible with one of the Open Source SCM tools.

  * At least one mailing list for questions & announcements of new
    releases.

  * At least one visibly active maintainer, who is willing to fix
    bugs, reply to email questions, and perform other `benevolent
    dictator' tasks.

  * Up to date manpages for all the functions in the collection.

This sounds like a lot of work, because it *is*.  That's the price of
writing something that others may want to use though.  Otherwise
everyone can use the GNU glib and their system libc.so library :)