[TUHS] nl section delimiters

David Arnold davida at pobox.com
Fri May 10 16:15:52 AEST 2024


nl(1) uses the notable character sequences “\:\:\:”, “\:\:”, and “\:” to delimit header, body, and trailer sections within its input. 

I wondered if anyone was able to shed light on the reason those were adopted as the defaults?

I would have expected perhaps something compatible with *roff (like, .\” something). 

FreeBSD claims nl first appeared in System III (although it previously claimed SVR2), but I haven’t dug into the implementation any further. 

Thanks in advance,



d


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