What is the difference between a "line feed" and a "carriage return"?
If there are two keywords then they must have their own meanings. So I want to know what makes them different and what their code is.
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.
Since I can not comment because of not having enough reward points I have to answer to correct answer given by @Burhan Khalid.
In very layman language Enter key press is combination of carriage return and line feed.
Carriage return points the cursor to the beginning of the line horizontly and Line feed shifts the cursor to the next line vertically.Combination of both gives you new line(\n) effect.
Reference - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return#Computers
Both of these are primary from the old printing days.
Carriage return is from the days of the teletype printers/old typewriters, where literally the carriage would return to the next line, and push the paper up. This is what we now call \r
.
Line feed LF
signals the end of the line, it signals that the line has ended - but doesn't move the cursor to the next line. In other words, it doesn't "return" the cursor/printer head to the next line.
For more sundry details, the mighty wikipedia to the rescue.