computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, a line is a unit of organization for text files. A line consists of a sequence of zero or more characters, usually displayed within a single horizontal sequence.
Depending on the
file system
In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one lar ...
or
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
being used the number of characters on a line may either be predetermined or fixed, or the length may vary from line to line. Fixed-length lines are sometimes called records. With variable-length lines, the end of each line is usually indicated by the presence of one or more special end-of-line characters, such as a
line feed
Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...
or
carriage return
A carriage return, sometimes known as a cartridge return and often shortened to CR, or return, is a control character or mechanism used to reset a device's position to the beginning of a line of text. It is closely associated with the line feed ...
.
A blank line usually refers to a line containing zero characters (not counting any end-of-line characters); though it may also refer to any line that does not contain any visible characters (consisting only of
whitespace
White space or whitespace may refer to:
Technology
* Whitespace characters, characters in computing that represent horizontal or vertical space
* White spaces (radio), allocated but locally unused radio frequencies
* TV White Space Database, a mec ...
).
Some tools that operate on text files (e.g., editors) provide a mechanism to reference lines by their
line number
In computing, a line number is a method used to specify a particular sequence of characters in a text file. The most common method of assigning numbers to lines is to assign every line a unique number, starting at 1 for the first line, and increm ...
.
See also
*
Newline
Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...