30 Aug
2006
30 Aug
'06
12:49 p.m.
On Wednesday 30 August 2006 02:04 pm, Fred Cisin wrote:
Heh. I never could understand the reason for that, when a zero byte is so
much easier to test for...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
>Some of
the CP/M tools used $ as a string terminator, if I'm
> remembering right...
On Wed, 30 Aug 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Actually, it's BDOS call 9--preserved to this
day in MS-DOS/Windoze.
I've no idea why a printable character was selected as a terminator.
Anyone have any idea of its origin?
IIRC, I saw an interview long ago, (maybe when Gary Kildall was the
co-host with Jim Warren of Computer Chronicles?), in which Gary
APOLOGIZED for that, and said that it had been a temporary kludge,
and hadn't originally been meant to be permanent.