The carriage return was a lever on typewriters that moved the cylinder to the right and started a new line. It was replaced by the Enter key, which now only needs to be used at the end of a paragraph. Carriage return also refers to the symbol or key that positions the cursor in the left margin. Operating systems use different codes for line endings, but FTP can transfer text files between them.
In the days before computing, typewriters featured a lever on the left side known as a carriage return. When pressed, the mechanism sent the card cylinder, or carriage, to the right and, at the same time, rotated the card up to start a new line. Finally, a power feedback was created which was pressed with the little finger of the right hand. This feature was first added to electric typewriters in 1960 by Smith Corona.
Carriage return, or just “return” for short, is now known as the Enter key and is labeled with a back arrow symbol (↵). This key has the same function as the original lever, moving the cursor to the start of the next line. With the advent of word wrapping, however, it was no longer necessary to press Enter at the end of each line. Now, the Return/Return key is known as a hard return and is only used at the end of a paragraph.
Carriage Return also refers to the symbol, command, or key that causes the printer to position or the cursor to appear in the left margin. Also check the paper feed. In ASCII or Unicode, the decimal character code 13 represents it. In some programming languages, such as C, UNIX, Java, and others, it is denoted by r.
Due to differences in operating languages and the codes used, text files are not always compatible between operating systems. For example, the Macintosh uses the CR code to indicate the end of each line, similar to a typewriter. With Linux, each line ends with LF, which indicates linefeed. These codes differ not only in letters; their ASCII codes are also different: CR is a 13 in the ASCII code, and LR is a 10. With Microsoft products, lines end with a combination of both: CRLF.
Fortunately, most people can use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transfer text files from one operating system to another. To transfer text files, users should choose ASCII mode of FTP. To transfer other types of files, such as photos or audio files, they should use FTP in binary mode.
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