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From: Invader@cup.portal.com (Michael K Donegan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Readln in THINK Pascal; (really--what's the space for?)
Message-ID: <39298@cup.portal.com>
Date: 15 Feb 91 16:07:22 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.100618.4840@cc.helsinki.fi>
  <5710@husc6.harvard.edu> <18704@brahms.udel.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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Why is it true that if eoln(f) is true, then f^ is ' '?
This has been true since the first implementations of Pascal.  The
only reason I know of is that the CDC6600 which hosted the early
implementations only had a 6 bit characters set.  There were 64
printable characters and no control characters.  So...in lieu of
control characters, the eoln function was created.
When Pascal was implemented on other machines, it was implemented that
way because that is what the language spec says.
	mkd