^X (was: an odd question

From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu>
Date: Thu Aug 9 20:46:09 2001

>
> Ding ding ding, you win. ^G rings the bell. However the original
> question
> was the notion of "Control and G" keys contracted to CTRL-G (tty
> nomenclature)
> to ^G.
>

I always assumed it had to do with 6-bit character set implementations.

On the CDC Cybers, which used a 6-bit character set, the peripheral
processors could be switched to a 7-bit mode, where lowercase
characters were translated into those 2-character sequences, and
vice-versa. I cant recall the exact scheme, but i seem to recall
2 different prefix characters being used...

Anyways, as i say i cant recall the Cyber character set... but it was
something like ^A would be translated to a lowercase a, and the ^
sort of switched bit 7 on (or xored it, or however you want to
think of it). And if you think of the ASCII character set, ^A would
be a control-A if bit 7 was switched from the capital A character.
and referring to ^a instead of ^A would normally be a mistake made
by people who dont realize that lowercase is inherently inferior ;)

Thats my theory.

-Lawrence LeMay
Received on Thu Aug 09 2001 - 20:46:09 BST