Re: Unix file to PC, weird LF-CR

At the risk of being incredibly technically nit-picky (hey, on this list
who'd notice? ;-), ASCII printers don't simply "move to a new line" by
CR/LF, they move to _the beginning_ of the new line. CR alone moves to the
beginning of the same line (used in the old days for "bold" print), while
LF alone advances one line but doesn't move horizontally either way.

While usually correct, the assumption that every time you move to a new
line you want to start at the beginning isn't _always_ true, and splitting
the functions allows greater flexibility for those times when it's
appropriate. . . .

midrange-l@midrange.com writes:
>From: Nathan M. Andelin <nandelin@relational-data.com>
>
>> > From: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>
>> > Goofy ... MS uses CRLF to denote end of line.
>>
>> Most ASCII printers do too!
>>
>
>     TTYs were originally hardware devices, which
>     (usually) adhered strictly to the ASCII standard.
>     According to ASCII, to move to a new line you
>     need two characters, a carriage return and a
>     line feed. In Unix, on the other hand, the
>     ASCII line feed is used for both purposes - so
>     we can't just use \n, because it wouldn't have
>     a carriage return and the next line will
>     start at the column right after the line feed.
>
>     In CP/M and its derivatives, such as MS-DOS and
>     Windows, the ASCII standard was strictly
>     adhered to, and therefore a new line requires
>     both a line feed and a carriage return.



Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com