What is the difference between a "line feed" and a "carriage return"?

string newline carriage-return linefeed
pheromix picture pheromix · Oct 5, 2012 · Viewed 266.4k times · Source

If there are these two keywords then they must have their own meaning. So I want to know what makes them different and what is their code?

Answer

Tsunamis picture Tsunamis · Oct 5, 2012

A line feed means moving one line forward. The code is \n.
A carriage return means moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. The code is \r.

Windows editors often still use the combination of both as \r\n in text files. Unix uses mostly only the \n.

The separation comes from typewriter times, when you turned the wheel to move the paper to change the line and moved the carriage to restart typing on the beginning of a line. This was two steps.

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