Edit - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

Rev

1

Thank you for this accurate memory. Backspace and Carriage Return (alone) were also used on printer to produce bold or underlined characters. And to go back to the origins, these two commands already existed in the 1930 to make the "carriage" "return" to its leftmost position, either to overstrike or to permit to start a fresh line with the help of the "new line" key which made rotate the roller one step. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Electric_typewriter . So "CR" + "LF" are dating before the computer history.

athena
– athena

2017-12-26 10:01:13 +00:00
Commented Dec 26, 2017 at 10:01
2

It may also be worth noting that some teletypes required that a CR be followed by a non-printing character to give the carriage time to fully cycle before next printing character arrived, and didn't support backspacing at all, so sending an LF after CR didn't cost anything, and the only way to accomplish overprinting was via CR.

supercat
– supercat

2017-12-26 18:40:32 +00:00
Commented Dec 26, 2017 at 18:40
The "days of teletypes" begins before the computer era. in the 1960s many computers had a console teletype for the operator, and even more used ASCII as their character set.

Walter Mitty
– Walter Mitty

2017-12-27 13:36:39 +00:00
Commented Dec 27, 2017 at 13:36

Add a comment |

Correct minor typos or mistakes
Clarify meaning without changing it
Add related resources or links
Always respect the author’s intent
Don’t use edits to reply to the author

create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
```
like so
```
add language identifier to highlight code
```python
def function(foo):
print(foo)
```
put returns between paragraphs
for linebreak add 2 spaces at end
_italic_ or **bold**
indent code by 4 spaces
backtick escapes `like _so_`
quote by placing > at start of line
to make links (use https whenever possible)

<https://example.com>

[example](https://example.com)

<a href="https://example.com">example</a>

formatting help »
answering help »