ASCII(1) | ASCII(1) |
NAME
ascii - report character aliases
SYNOPSIS
ascii [-d] [-x] [-o] [-h] [-v] [char-alias]
OPTIONS
Called with no options, ascii behaves like "ascii -h". Options are as follows:
-t
-s
-a
-d
-x
-o
-b
-h, -?
-v
DESCRIPTION
Characters in the ASCII set can have many aliases, depending on context. A character’s possible names include:
This utility accepts command-line strings and tries to interpret them as one of the above. When it finds a value, it prints all of the names of the character. The constructs in the following list can be used to specify character values. If an argument could be interpreted in two or more ways, names for all the different characters it might be are dumped.
character
^character
\[abfnrtv0]: A backslash followed by certain special characters (abfnrtv).
mnemonic
hexadecimal
decimal
octal
bit pattern
ISO/ECMA code
name
:class:
The slang names recognized and printed out are from a rather comprehensive list that first appeared on USENET in early 1990 and has been continuously updated since. Mnemonics recognized and printed include the official ASCII set, some official ISO names (where those differ) and a few common-use alternatives (such as NL for LF). HTML/SGML entity names are also printed when applicable. All comparisons are case-insensitive, and dashes are mapped to spaces. Any unrecognized arguments or out of range values are silently ignored. Note that the <option>-s</option> option will not recognize "long" names, as it cannot differentiate them from other parts of the string.
For correct results, be careful to stringize or quote shell metacharacters in arguments (especially backslash).
This utility is particularly handy for interpreting cc(1)'s ugly octal "invalid-character" messages, or when coding anything to do with serial communications. As a side effect it serves as a handy base-converter for random 8-bit values.
AUTHOR
Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>; November 1990 (home page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/). Ioannis E. Tambouras < <ioannis@debian.org> added command options and minor enhancements. Brian J. Ginsbach <ginsbach@sgi.com> fixed several bugs and expanded the man page. David N. Welton <davidw@efn.org> added the <option>-s</option> option. Matej Vela corrected the ISO names. Dave Capella contributed the idea of listing HTML/SGML entities.
2024-05-27 |