Title: File Transfer
Author: Steven Zeil


If you prepare files on one machine but want to use them on another,
you need some means of transferring them. For example, if you edit
files on your home PC, you may eventually need to get those files onto
the CS Department network. On the other hand, you may want to take
files your instructor has provided off of that network for use on your
home PC.

# Before You Start: Binary and Text Files 

A complicating factor in transferring files from one computer to
another is that you must decide whether the files you want to transfer
should be treated as "text" or as "binary".

All files are containers of bytes. But in many files, these
bytes are intended to represent text:

* The numbers stored in individual bytes represent characters.
* The file is logically divided into lines.
* The end of each line is indicated by a special \firstterm{line terminator}, 
   a sequence of one or two characters reserved for that specific purpose.

Such files are referred to as \firstterm{text files}.  The way in
which text is encoded as numbers in a text file is governed by various
international standards, which we'll look at in just a moment.
Because so many programs observe these standards, you can safely
manipulate text files with a wide range of different text-oriented
programs, even ones that the original creator of the text file might
not have intended or might not have known about.