Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delimiterless input


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. Not having seen the term (WP:IDONTKNOWIT) is not a valid reason to delete. Disregarding those arguments, the debate is pretty balanced. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 09:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Delimiterless input

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Completely unsourced, and not based on any use in the industry. The content describes non-textblock mode i/o. Google hits include ISBN 9786133230750: apparently a collection of Wikipedia articles including this one. —EncMstr (talk) 22:54, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I was just talking, in another AFD discussion, about how shoddy Wikipedia's coverage of computing topics is. &#9786;  Yes, there won't be sources to find on this because it's highly confused and wrong.  It's a shame that we don't have articles on things like terminal concentrators  and intelligent terminals   explaining the reality that is rather different to what is propounded here (or indeed in our computer terminal article, which makes quite a hash of explaining what an intelligent terminal is).  And the world has been told this rubbish for five years!  Uncle G (talk) 03:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete -- notability not demonstrated in a reliable secondary source. N2e (talk) 06:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The concept was an important one, back in the terminal era. It's not a great article and we may have something better already in a discussion of block/non-block modes or raw vs. cooked IO, so there might be a merge possible? As to the name "delimiterless input", wasn't this a DEC-specific term back in the PDP11 era? As it was neither the IBM or the Unix term for the same concept, this particular phrasing has been rather lost since. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete -- notability not demonstrated in a reliable secondary source. N2e (talk) 06:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The concept was an important one, back in the terminal era. It's not a great article and we may have something better already in a discussion of block/non-block modes or raw vs. cooked IO, so there might be a merge possible? As to the name "delimiterless input", wasn't this a DEC-specific term back in the PDP11 era? As it was neither the IBM or the Unix term for the same concept, this particular phrasing has been rather lost since. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The concept was an important one, back in the terminal era. It's not a great article and we may have something better already in a discussion of block/non-block modes or raw vs. cooked IO, so there might be a merge possible? As to the name "delimiterless input", wasn't this a DEC-specific term back in the PDP11 era? As it was neither the IBM or the Unix term for the same concept, this particular phrasing has been rather lost since. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Anything else that we have is better than this, because this is wrong and should not be kept, merged, or retained in any way. Why do you want to delete stuff that's useful, well-founded, and informative and keep stuff that's folk-written, misinformative, and wrong, Andy Dingley?  Why should we keep tripe on the basis of speculative "I have no idea but think it might be true." guesswork?  (Especially when it isn't true.)  You are challenged to prove that this is DEC terminology (and on top of that that it's DEC terminology that means this).  It's not in any DEC literature that I can find, certainly not in any PDP literature relating to Unix; and EncMstr in the nomination also hasn't found this in any industry literature. The concept isn't an important one because the concept is tripe.  The actual situation with terminals (and there are sources above that provide at least an introductory outline) is not as simplistic a dichotomy as this.  Nor is the actual situation covered by the distinction between cooked mode, cbreak mode, and raw mode, which are not the distinctions between dumb terminal and smart terminal hardware, they being purely software, terminal driver/line discipline, features  (65.112.197.16, as did 68.0.124.33 .), and which don't even apply, as you and this article would have one believe, to the Apple II, TRS 80, and IBM PC at all. It's no wonder that our coverage of computing subjects is so bad, when the verifiable and informative is argued for deletion on the grounds that it's in existing published reference books (, astonished lurkers!)  and the outright wrong is defended by speculation and guesswork. Uncle G (talk) 13:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: I worked exclusively in the DEC environment c. 1982–1988, during the obsolescencing of block-mode terminals.  I read every DEC manual and book I could get my hands on, and the companies I worked for had hundreds of them.  Never came across the term delimiterless, let alone ...input.  The VMS terminal driver source code had much to deal with terminal block mode operations, but there was nothing about this in its single character i/o stuff.  —EncMstr (talk) 18:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Delete. Obviously, this article is discussing the three (terminal) device buffer models, line-buffering, full-buffering, and no-buffering, as specified also in the POSIX standard and selectable by setvbuf. I have never come across the term "delimiterless input" for no-buffering, and even if it was used anywhere it is certainly not notable. Nageh (talk) 10:39, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.