2 ms·
Interesting. I wonder if this association of $ with strings is related to the use of $ (rather than NUL) as the string terminator for DOS output routines?
by JoshTriplett 2y ago
Interesting. I wonder if this association of $ with strings is related to the use of $ (rather than NUL) as the string terminator for DOS output routines?
- mock-possum 2y agoI always just figured ‘$’ looks like S, and S is for String
- int_19h 2y agoPretty sure DOS got it from CP/M, but I'm not sure why the latter would have it. That said, it probably has something to do with earliest 5-bit and 6-bit text encodings that were very constrained wrt control characters, and often originating from punch cards where fixed-length or length-prefixed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith_constant) strings were more common. E.g. DEC SIXBIT didn't even have NUL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-bit_character_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-bit_character_code