Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: DME and vanishing text
Message-ID: <4115@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 15 Aug 89 11:22:38 GMT
References: <89222.135727WTW101@PSUVM> <15874@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Distribution: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 32

In article <15874@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, rtczegledi@crocus.waterloo.edu (Richard Czegledi) writes:
> How about using CR LF's?

Because it increases the size of files (slightly) and increases the complexity
of programs that manipulate text files (considerably, in some cases) for
absolutely no good reason. Because CP/M and MS-DOS are the only systems that
do things this way (UNIX and AmigaDOS use LF, OS/9 uses just a single CR, and
most minicomputer and mainframe operating systems use either 80-column card
image format or variable length records).

> One seriously braindamaged (in my opInion) 'feature'
> of AmigashmnOS is that it uses LF's for end of lines.  This creates lots
> of problems when I'm taking my textfiles to IBM's and other machines.

So write a 5-line BASIC program to fix them up, and don't worry about it.

> Why couldn't they have done it proper?

They did do it proper. It's MS-DOS and CP/M that screwed up.

> Lf is a line feed!

The ASCII character set defines LF as a line feed, or as a line terminator. It
specifies that if a single character is to be used as a line terminator it
should be line-feed. For reasons obvious to the most casual observor, a single
character line terminator is preferable (most MS-DOS programs punt the problem
by keying off CR as the terminator, BTW, and skipping LFs. Too many programmers
out there who wouldn't know an O/S if it bit them on the ass, bringing all
their CP/M bad habits with them). QED.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva      `-_-'
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.hackercorp.com  'U`