Where should the type information be 135

And it's nonsense.

The point is that you need to put the indirection into (and I do mean into) every system utility, into every OTHER language run-time system and possibly into every operating system interface that uses lines of text, as well as into the C one. That is outside your power.

Sigh. See above. Let's take a specific example. You want to write a 254-character line from C program A into a standard text file with an 80-character length limit, manipulate that line using a standard command, and read it into a C program B. No matter HOW you cut it, that 254-character line cannot be held within a single 80-character line, so you HAVE to use some escape convention.

You have to hack all the system utilities and other language run-time systems to support C's escape (line wrapping), say that a C text line and an operating system text line are different things and leave the user to sort out the chaos, or not support that feature of the C standard. There ain't no other option.

Try it on fixed blocksize tapes, for a start. Many of them do not support writing from a particular block position. IBM MVS and CMS have similar restrictions in parbreastioned datasets (and, if you don't know what those are, it is too complex to explain). Not all positionable files are simple disk files.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.