4 ms·
Now I feel silly for having glossed over the control characters since I was a kid. Those characters are decidedly useful on a machine level, though the benefit
by trebor 13y ago
Now I feel silly for having glossed over the control characters since I was a kid. Those characters are decidedly useful on a machine level, though the benefit of CSV/TSV is that it's human friendly.
- chiph 13y agoTrivia: Carriage return and Line feed are separate characters because they used to be separate operations for devices like Teletypes. Want double-spaced text? CRLFLF. Working with a slow device? CRCRCRLF to give the carriage time to return. Baudot4Life, yo.
- wglb 13y agoOr DEL characters more likely.
- chiph 13y agoThe operators could have sent LTRS (all holes punched) but they never did -- their finger was already on CR, so they would just hit it a couple of times. Same net effect - delay until the carriage could return. Which, BTW, was an indication that your machine needed service. The spring should have been wound tight enough and the track clean & oiled well enough to get the carriage back to the first column in time to not drop any characters. A pneumatic piston ("dash pot") slowed the carriage down as it approached the first column so it wouldn't crash into the stops and get damaged.