Re: Purpose of DEL

[Markus Kuhn]

Robert Brady wrote on 2001-01-29 20:25 UTC:
> (Isn't DEL used for something already?)

DEL deletes a character from a punch card or punch tape. That is why it
is located outside the C0 range. Only by punching out all holes (all 7
bits of ASCII) can you overwrite any other ASCII character.

The word anachronism is a very good approximation for what DEL really is
(along with most of the rest of C0 except perhaps for LF, BS, TAB, ESC,
FF).

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

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