Re: [P-1788]: Re objective == infinity
On Oct 1 2012, Ralph Baker Kearfott wrote:
If nothing else, it might point out an important aspect
of writing a standard: Making sure it is unambiguous and
easily understood.
(It was slightly before my time, but I'm still wondering
why "standard" ASCII text ends lines differently on
PC's MAC's and Unix / Linux; it's sometimes a bit of a hassle.)
Seriously off-group, but I can answer from fairly direct knowledge.
In the beginning, ASCII was (essentially) a telegraphic code, based
on serial interfaces to modified manual typewriters, and carriage
return and line feed were separate. The usual convention was to
send CR-LF, but others generated a line feed when the typist typed
carriage return and yet others used a single newline character. So
ASCII allowed two forms, and punned line feed with newline (which
were different in some other codes).
MS-DOS is a hacked CPM, which used the preferred ASCII approach,
but Unix used C as a basis, which was derived from BCPL, which used
a single special character for an end-of-line indicator (i.e. a
newline character, as mentioned in ASCII). I have no idea what was
being smoked at Apple when they adopted the carriage return form,
and I am unaware of any previous widespread use.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.