Why shouldn't ^J (linefeed) be used as a command in an application?

Phil Hughes fyl at ssc.UUCP
Sat Dec 17 03:51:07 AEST 1988


In article <713 at auspex.UUCP>, guy at auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
| >What are the historical or cultural reasons that ^J is not used in UNIX
| >tools?

> There *are* UNIX cbreak-mode or raw-mode applications that use ^J and ^M
> for different purposes; some versions of EMACS do (but then again they
> permit you to do fairly arbitrary key bindings).  The main problem is if
> you have a terminal that can't send them both, but that's a different
> matter.

Zebu, our records management product uses ^M to get to the next field
and ^J to get to a secondary record.  We have been using it this way
at SSC since 1983 and have been selling it for almost as long with no
problems/complaints.  Did I miss something as to why this could be a
problem?
-- 
Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155  (206)FOR-UNIX
    uw-beaver!tikal!ssc!fyl or uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl



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