The History Behind the Definition of a 'String'

Question

I have never thought about until recently, but I\'m not sure why we call strings strings. I am a .NET programmer, but I believe the concept of strings exist in

Answer 1

The word was originally used to differentiate between a set of values to which the particular order of elements doesn't matter (for instance, a set of random samples of measurements) and another that could only have its meaning preserved when the order is also preserved. Originally a string could be a set of any kind of values, but since in the post-mainframe era a string of characters is by far the most common kind, the fact that the values are characters became a "default".