shebang strange thing...

[Tim Rowe]

On 27 Jun 2003 09:33:23 +0950, Ben Finney
<bignose-hates-spam at and-zip-does-too.com.au> wrote:

>So, it was teletypes that needlessly preserved the CR and LF as separate
>control operations, due to the typewriter-based thinking of their
>designers.  If they'd been combined into the one operation, we would
>have all the same functionality but none of the confusion over line
>ending controls.

It wasn't needless.  A CR with no LF  was often used for overstriking,
as a way of extending the rather limited character set.  'O'
overstruck with '-' would make a passable \Theta, for instance..