Re: [Pan-users] article-cache v 0.139

[alandtaylor]

In paper-tape days, nul or null was all zeros - or on the actual physical tape, 
all holes.  (One might think that each hole was an "on" bit or binary 1 but not 
so.)  The concept was,  I think, that you could correct a tape by repunching 
the bad character so that spot was all holes.  I think this was for both 
five-bit and eight-bit tapes.  Just a bit of trivia.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Duncan
> Sent: 10/01/12 07:56 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Pan-users] article-cache v 0.139
> 
> Rhialto posted on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:34:51 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
> > On Mon 01 Oct 2012 at 11:43:08 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> >> But usenetbucket's devs apparently didn't read past "null", and took it
> >> to be "null-as-in-byte-0x00".
> > 
> >> I've often wondered just how often that ambiguity causes issues.  Here
> >> we have a case in point!
> > 
> > Another issue that seems to confuse many people is that the character
> > with value 0 is called NUL, with one L, and not NULL, or null, or
> > anything else with 2 ls. All control characters 0-31 have 3 character
> > uppercase names. So if the RFC says "null", that also means it can't be
> > "NUL".
> 
> I've seen that point made before, but I've never checked it, and don't 
> remember seeing it in the intro programming (pascal) classes I did have.
> 
> Without that research it does ring a bit hollow, tho.  As in, all the 
> other three-letter control-characters in ASCII, many of which made a 
> great deal of sense back in the telegraph-style physical printer control 
> output days, but not so much now.  With certain exceptions (line-end 
> chars, which can actually differ, tabs, nul(l), in some contexts ctrl-C, 
> not so many others), they're generally simply data-stream characters now, 
> like any other, or at least like any other out of the normal printing 
> range.
> 
> So here, I always thought NUL was much like SOH, ETX, EOT, ACK, BEL, 
> NAK...
> 
> In fact, take a look at this ASCII table, which lists those same as 
> (null), (start of heading), (end of text), (end of transmission), 
> (acknowledge), (bell), (negative acknowledge)...
> 
> http://www.asciitable.com/
> 
> IOW, at least according to /that/ table, NUL is INDEED a standard 3-
> letter short form for "null", just as SOH is the standard 3-letter short 
> form of "start of heading".
> 
> But of course not everything found on the net is true, and I've never 
> actually cared enough about it to spend any dedicated time actually 
> researching it, so you may well be correct and my general feeling as well 
> as that table may be wrong.
> 
> But either way, as I said, I've seen that argument made before, so 
> correct or misconception, it has a reasonable following who believe it to 
> be true.
> 
> -- 
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
> 
> 
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