WD> It's not certain but my bet is the 71 comes from there, someone's WD> knowledge/experience embedded in punchcard technology.
Possibly but from my past experience I believe it has to do with line lengths on tty's, line printers, and the such which were as a rule 80 characters wide. The 'missing' 8 characters had to do with margins if I am not mistaken. As for the null terminator that is a hangover from strings being terminated with nulls. I am unsure where that idea originates but I suspect pre-F77 FORTRAN.
Life is good, Maurice
... Don't cry for me I have vi. --- GNU bash, version 5.0.7(1)-release (aarch64-raspi3b+-linux-gnu) * Origin: Little Mikey's CanadARM - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001.2989)