> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 1:08 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: how do i simulate a null character from the keyboard? > ctrl-z, by the way, used as the terminator by MSDOS and other > early PC operating systems was an unintentionally humorous > choice. It's defined as the SUB character, used as > a placeholder to indicate the data lost during a garbled > transmission.
MS-DOS inherited the usage from CP/M. CP/M used it because the CP/M directory did not store exact length of the file. A marker was needed to specify where the file actually ended if the file size was not an exact multiple of disk block size. > Steve Z ______ Dennis -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
