Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 10:36:50 -0700, John Ames wrote:

It's always struck me as funny that nobody *ever* seems to use the ASCII
control characters that already exist for record demarcation for that
purpose ...

Pick did, I believe.

... aside from CR/LF/tab/NUL, and BEL/SUB/ESC in interactive-
terminal contexts, the whole 0x00-0x1F range might as well not exist.

Terminal systems do make use of other characters for various purposes,
e.g. CTRL/C for interrupt, CTRL/O to discard output etc.

I tried to get a discussion going on this subject in
alt.folklore.computers a few months ago
<https://alt.folklore.computers.narkive.com/5xa8qoJG/origins-of-control-characters>.

Not that it'd be a conspicuously *good* idea, but I've always harbored
an impish desire to devise a format that makes use of the rest in some
way that maps relatively logically to the original intent/description...

You really have to wonder that that original intent was in some cases,
though ...