[tex-k] Why write_ln is used before final_end in tex.web?

[Karl Berry]

Igor - sorry, but I cannot answer your questions about the PDP-10. (I
rather suspect the OS is as relevant as the PDP hardware, too, but
am not sure of anything.)

Knuth expects people implementing TeX to use their own sensible
judgement about such things as line endings.  If you want to make your
port always end in a newline before exiting, that is fine. If you want
to keep TeX's behavior the way it is in tex.web, that's fine too. If you
want to exactly reproduce the behavior of the original TeX on PDP-10 in
your port, of course that's fine too, but you'll have to find out how
the PDP-10 worked on your own, or from someone else. I don't know.
--best, karl.