table of contents
other sections
ASCII(1) | Development Tools | ASCII(1) |
NAME¶
ascii - report character aliasesSYNOPSIS¶
ascii [-dxohv] [-t] [char-alias...]
OPTIONS¶
Called with no options, ascii behaves like `ascii -h'. Options are as follows: -tScript-friendly mode, emits only
ISO/decimal/hex/octal/binary encodings of the character.
-s
Parse multiple characters. Convenient way of parsing
strings.
-d
Ascii table in decimal.
-x
Ascii table in hex.
-o
Ascii table in octal.
-h, -?
Show summary of options and a simple ASCII table.
-v
Show version of program.
DESCRIPTION¶
Characters in the ASCII set can have many aliases, depending on context. A character's possible names include:•Its bit pattern (binary representation).
•Its hex, decimal and octal representations.
•Its teletype mnemonic and caret-notation form
(for control chars).
•Its backlash-escape form in C (for some control
chars).
•Its printed form (for printables).
•Its full ISO official name in English.
•Its ISO/ECMA code table reference.
•Its name as an HTML/SGML entity.
•Slang and other names in wide use for it among
hackers.
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
Any character not described by one of the following
conventions represents the character itself.
^character
A caret followed by a character.
\[abfnrtv0]
A backslash followed by certain special characters
(abfnrtv).
mnemonic
An ASCII teletype mnemonic.
hexadecimal
A hexadecimal (hex) sequence consists of one or two
case-insensitive hex digit characters (01234567890abcdef). To ensure hex
interpretation use
hexh,0xhex,xhex or
\xhex.
decimal
A decimal sequence consists of one, two or three decimal
digit characters (0123456789). To ensure decimal interpretation use
\0ddecimal,ddecimal, or
\ddecimal.
octal
An octal sequence consists of one, two or three octal
digit characters (01234567). To ensure octal interpretation use
\<octal>,
0o<octal>,o<octal>, or
\o<octal>.
bit pattern
A bit pattern (binary) sequence consists of one to eight
binary digit characters (01). To ensure bit interpretation use
0b<bit pattern>, b<bit pattern> or
\b <bit pattern>.
ISO/ECMA code
An ISO/ECMA code sequence consists of one or two decimal
digit characters, a slash, and one or two decimal digit characters.
name
An official ASCII or (unofficial) slang name.
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 -s 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/). Reproduce, use, and modify as you like as long as you don't remove this authorship notice. 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 -s option. Matej Vela corrected the ISO names. Dave Capella contributed the idea of listing HTML/SGML entities.10/01/2014 | ascii |