"Steve Holden" <stev....enweb.com> wrote: > Unknown wrote: > > On 2009-01-12, John Machin <sjmac...@lexicon.net> wrote:
> > I believe that "feature" was inherited by CP/M from DEC OSes > > (RSX-11 or RSTS-11). AFAICT, all of CP/M's file I/O API > > (including the FCB) was lifted almost directly from DEC's > > PDP-11 stuff, which probably copied it from PDP-8 stuff. > > > > Perhaps in the early 60's somebody at DEC had a reason. The > > really interesting thing is that we're still suffering because > > of it 40+ years later. > > > I suspect this is probably a leftover from some paper tape data formats, > when it was easier to detect the end of a file with a sentinel byte than > it was to detect run-off as end of file. It could easily date back to > the PDP-8. We can be kind of fortunate that the ASCII chars for field separator, record separator, file separator, unit separator did not catch on in a big way in file formatting. (remembering the Pick OS running on Reality...) - Hendrik -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list