ANd 'DEL' is 0x7F in ASCII - so it would punch all the holes, the only way to make 1 char punch turn anything to the same thing.

And this is why DEL is properly a forward delete operation: it erases the character under the cursor and advances (the tape) over the next.

I blame the VT220 for screwing this up.

Heh.

My only brush with that kind of thing was servicing computers that wrote to the paper tape punches we used in the Marines in the early 90s.