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If ASCII didn't have control sequences then teletypes wouldn't have worked. How do you make the carriage (a literal thing on a chain being driven back and fort
by rswail 2y ago
If ASCII didn't have control sequences then teletypes wouldn't have worked.
How do you make the carriage (a literal thing on a chain being driven back and forth) "return" to the start of the line without a "carriage return" code?
How would you make the paper feed go up one line without a "line feed" code?
Same for ringing the bell, tabs, backspace etc.
A "new line" on a teletype was actually two characters, a CR and a LF.
Unfortunately, using one of the other sequences (eg RS, for "Record Separator") would have saved billions of CPU cycles and misinterpreted text files dealing with the CRLF, CR, LF, LFCR sequences to mean "new line".