Character scanning on the IBM 7070

One general requirement in the construction of symbol manipulators and automatic programming systems is the need to scan a line of information, usually from left to right, and to break down or subdivided this line into words, phrases or some form of subgrouping. Assuming a natural or free form was allowed in the composition of the line, it will be necessary to examine in sequence each character of the line and, depending on the syntactical rules in force, accumulate characters into a word until a separator is recognized. For example, consider breaking down AX, BX, CX on the basis of the comma.

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