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http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/big-picture.html#faq-6.17:
And '\r' is the carriage return, even though your computer might not have a carriage that returns.
I know that he is trying to play with the words. Does anyone know what exactly the author means by "a carriage that returns"?
From Penguin Pete's Blog
You'd start a new paragraph by feeding in the paper and then - with your left hand - shoving the carriage (the part on top that has the paper) all the way to the right so the keys will be hitting the spot on the far left first. Then as you typed, the carriage would advance one space at a time. When it got all the way to the right (usually it went "ding!"), you'd have to push that carriage back again, and if you didn't also hit the line-feed lever, you'd start typing over the same line. So the line-feed lever is right there, mounted in the same spot you'd use to push the carriage back anyway, and you could combine both motions.
In the olden days, people used typewriters. The device that carried the paper was called the carriage, and there was a key that returned the carriage to the left right and fed the paper up one line so that a person could type continuously without having to reset the page when one line was finished.
This is also the reason why the "Enter" key is still sometimes referred to as the "Return" key, and why it has that little arrow that points to the left.
A carriage is a "moving part of a machine that carries other parts into the required position," such as a "typewriter carriage."
The "carriage return" character is called so because it's a new line character, and in a typewriter, to go to a new line the carriage is moved (returned) to the beginning of the line.
The part to understand in the joke is "your computer might not have a carriage." Effectively, in a computer, there is no part called carriage.
To elaborate on my answer to a related question:
A carriage is the part of a typewriter that controls where on the page the next character will appear.
It will move the page a long with each character typed.
To get the carriage back to the right (or left, if you write from the right) a carriage return is performed.
For more information on typewriters, see this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter
So on computers, that use control characters (different combinations on different operating systems, but always involving \r or \n) to control where the next character will appear, there is no carriage to return, the cursor movement is controlled by software and electronics.
So what is meant by
even though your computer might not have a carriage that returns
is that computers do not have the mechanical part called a carriage, but they still do carriage returns.
The carriage on a typewriter is basically the entire assembly that holds the paper.
(See comment below)
In an automatic typewriter it moves to the left as you type. (See other answers.)
When your author says:
And '\r' is the carriage return, even though your computer might not have a carriage that returns.
They're making reference to the fact that modern word processors don't physically have carriages, though they have the same functionality simulated in software.
In my own words I'll say this: Typewriters have carriages and there's a key that when pressed, returns the carriage to the start of a new line so you can continue your typing but on a new line.
With the development of computers -which are meant to make the typing process more efficient -there was not the need to remove this slogan or ... It had to be maintained for what I'll call backward compatibility -referring to our old typists; that's why the key settings were not much changed except that it's now electronic. So, with an electronic system without any mechanical 'carriage', that yet does the same carriage returning flips, the phrase was not discarded.
The carriage is a moving part on a typewriter that carries the paper. When one letter is typed on the paper, it moves together with the paper to the left so that your next letter will hit the position right to it. When you want to have a new line, the carriage "returns" to the rightmost position so that your letter will hit the leftmost of the paper. It's a little difficult to explain this using words. This video shows it all: What is CRLF? Carriage Return? (this link starts from the exact position where the carriage returns, you only have to watch about a few seconds to understand it).
