Mail Archives: djgpp/1998/07/05/20:15:38
rwaltman AT bellatlantic DOT net (Roberto Waltman) told us
> >Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:
> >>On 2 Jul 1998, Gili wrote:
> >> Call me silly, but aren't editors suppose to stop reading in
> >> textfiles at the EOF character? Isn't that the specification of some
> >> standard?
> >No, it's not a standard. It's a left-over from the ancient days of the
> >CP/M operating system (which predates DOS). Somebody wanted to avoid
> >accessing the file's directory entry (to know its size) when reading it.
>
> It was (is?) a standard in the CP/M world. CP/M keeps the file
> size as the number of 128 byte sectors that the file occupies,
> there isn't an exact byte count. The EOF character (CTRL-Z) is
> the only way a text file can be 'ended' at an arbitrary point.
(Taking the risk that I _again_ say something I have to admit of
later that it was wrong)
I think it's much older than CP/M.
What exact character would be used in the papertape days to
signal the end of a tape? Decennia ago I used them, but I don't
remember.
CTRL/Z - ETX (CTRL/C) - EOT (CTRL/D) - EM (CTRL/Y)?
Or more than one, platform-dependent?
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