line endings and Cygwin

[Aaron Bentley]

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Martin Pool wrote:
| (Why oh why did Microsoft ever think CRLF was a good idea?...)

AIUI, CRLF was the *original* idea, on teletypes.  Of course, back then,
they were presentational, and didn't have quite the meaning they do
nowadays.  They didn't mean "end of line", they meant "and then move
like so".

A teletype hack to print a diagonal line made of Xs might go
"\r\nX\nX\nX\nX\nX\n"

Unix decided linefeed implied carriage return, Mac decided carriage
return implied linefeed, and Microsoft clung faithfully to the orignal
standard.

Not the usual Microsoft story, I know.  Probably decisions made back in
the QDOS days.  I wonder what CP/M did?

Aaron
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