Docstrings considered too complicated

D'Arcy J.M. Cain darcy at druid.net
Wed Mar 3 11:46:03 EST 2010


On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 15:05:54 +0000 (UTC)
Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:
> > It was actually an improvement over CP/M's file
> > system. CP/M didn't have hierarchical directories
> 
> Neither did the original MS-DOS filesystem.

I think that it always had a hierarchical file system although I am not
sure about 86-DOS or QDOS on which is was based.

> > or timestamps and recorded file sizes in 128-byte blocks
> > rather than bytes.
> 
> I thought that was true of the original MS-DOS filesystem as
> well, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

And that is why text files in MS-DOS and CP/M before it end with ^Z.
They needed a way to tell where the end of the information was.  Why
they used ^Z (SUB - Substitute) instead of ^C (ETX - End of TeXt) or
even ^D (EOT - End Of Transmission) is anyone's guess.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



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