"File types"

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: "File types"
>   From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
>   Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:04:03 -0700 (PDT)
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>> >Some of the CP/M tools used $ as a string terminator,  if I'm remembering
>> >right...
>
>On Wed, 30 Aug 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> Actually, it's BDOS call 9--preserved to this day in MS-DOS/Windoze.  I've
>> no idea why a printable character was selected as a terminator.  Anyone
>> have any idea of its origin?
>
>IIRC, I saw an interview long ago, (maybe when Gary Kildall was the
>co-host with Jim Warren of Computer Chronicles?), in which Gary
>APOLOGIZED for that, and said that it had been a temporary kludge,
>and hadn't originally been meant to be permanent.
>
>
>For their first assignment, I have my assembly language students write a
>program to display their name AND the price that they paid for the
>textbook (to force use of function 2, instead of 9).  We then use creating
>their own puts() function to get into jumps, conditional jumps, and loops.

I did that once to annoy someone only the dollar sign was faked by
adding 80h to it so the terminator was not observed by BDOS-9.  

Another time I modded CP/M itself to use null (00h) instead.  Then 
again I didn't want it to be portable. ;)


Allison