On 1/26/11 1:18 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
So CR alone should be available as "go to the beginning of the current
line". LF alone should mean "go to the beginning of the next line".
And that should be it. Unix got this right. CP/M et al got this wrong.
CP/M did not invent that meaning for LF. LF goes back decades earlier
than CP/M.
I mentioned CP/M because it's the first OS that inherited the sequence
without actually being backed up by a paper-based TTY, where a very weak
argument could be constructed that CR/LF is how the mechanics of the
system works.
In the early 80's, unix wasn't seen much. The best systems were the DEC
computers, and a lot of software professionals expected DEC to become
the dominant player. DEC operating systems were widely seen as the best.
(IBM was still mired in their ridiculous EBCDIC encoding.)
I suspect that unix and its conventions would be dead by now if not for
Linux.
Be that as it may, in Unix '\n' means "go to the beginning of next line"
and '\r' means "go to the beginning of the current line". I argued
destructively that this is the way things should have been EVEN on
paper-based terminals and NO DISCUSSION the way things should be on
today's terminal emulators.
Unix got this right. CP/M et al got this wrong.
Andrei
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