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Top-level
I've always been a bit weirded out about all of that. For those born in the current millennium: pressing Enter is ^M "Carriage Return" because with out linotype machines, that would make sure you didn't type past the paper. Only you also needed the bar to roll, so you had ^J "Line Feed". For a while systems would send ^M^J when you pressed the enter key, and some still do (Windows). Others just shortened down to ^J with the ^M implied. ^K, ^L, & ^Y are their own stories too. 2 comments
"End of Medium" basically meant "Hey, stop trying to read anything from this device!" It was there for punch cards, paper and magnetic tapes, and other things. Some OS' were particularly sensitive about it. Fun fact, in the early days you could troll someone on certain terminals by having their terminal send a ^Y, which would lock that terminal until it restarted. Fortunately you couldn't hear either the laughing or swearing thanks to the deafening roar from banks of air handlers |
Gregory's Server
@jrconlin
> ^K, ^L, & ^Y are their own stories too
what’s the ^Y story?