🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ben.2920@epmooch.UUCP> ben@epmooch.UUCP (Rev. Ben A. Mesander) writes:
>>In article <14935@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
>[...]
>>	There is no "end of file" character in amigados.
>[...]
>
>What is ctrl-\ then? Does it not indicate EOF to a stream that is connected
>to a console at least? (Yes, I realize that the character is not put as the
>last character in a file ala CP/M ctrl-Z).

    ctrl-\ sent to a cooked console causes the console to send an EOF
    (i.e. Read() returns an error) to the program doing the Read().  The
    ctrl-\ character itself is NEVER interpreted by a program as meaning
    EOF, it is just a specially cooked character by the console device, just
    like ^X and other control characters.

    In otherwords, a ctrl-\ inside a text file does not cause, generate or
    indicate an EOF.

    The original idea of having an EOF character took off with CP/M, where
    files were always multiples of the sector size long and an EOF
    character was required so programs would not misinterpret extra garbage
    after the 'end' of the file.  Unfortunately, the IBM-PC propogated the
    idiocy, and in fact never phased it out even though PC-DOS/MS-DOS
    finally did implement a real file length and support calls to handle
    it.

--

    Matthew Dillon	    dillon@Overload.Berkeley.CA.US
    891 Regal Rd.	    uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon
    Berkeley, Ca. 94708
    USA