Docstrings considered too complicated

[Gregory Ewing]

D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

> 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.

Well, ^C is what people used for interrupting their BASIC
programs. And ^D would have made it almost compatible with
unix, which would have been far too sensible!

My guess is that it was chosen for its mnemonic value --
end of alphabet, end of file.

Also remember there were programs like Wordstar that used
control key combinations for all manner of things. It might
have been the only key left on the keyboard that wasn't
used for anything else.

-- 
Greg