Gregory's Server@darius spaces were the original null-terminator, all zeroes on the cards, so I suspect but do not know that hitting a space in card readers tripped long-understood shortcuts the way modern C would shortcut on "a or b", with b never getting evaluated if a returns true - the rest of this card doesn't need to be evaluated, baked deep in the hardware.
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 @mhoye I'm grateful that the book doesn't have too many of those! But anyway, I guess I'm wondering why the collation order actually matters--do lower collated characters ultimately get evaluated by the card readers more efficiently?  @darius It turns out, they keep beating that collation drum all the way through it! Sorting via mechanical processes is that important, and the idea of a compiler or even "software as a control flow operator" barely even registers as anything worth caring about until somebody has to explain _what a compiler is_ in like the second last chapter. |
@darius there's a passing reference in that book to cards being editable as a result of this behavior, but it's one of those "everyone knows this, why bother explaining it?" asides....