ASCII(1)



ASCII(1)                       Development Tools                      ASCII(1)

NAME
       ascii - report character aliases

SYNOPSIS
       ascii [-dxohv] [-t] [char-alias...]

OPTIONS
       Called with no options, ascii behaves like `ascii -h'. Options are as
       follows:

       -t
           Script-friendly mode, emits only ISO/decimal/hex/octal/binary
           encodings of the character.

       -s
           Parse multiple characters. Convenient way of parsing strings.

       -a
           Print in vertical aspect (4 columns by 16 rows) rather than 16x4.
           This option combines only with -d -o -x -b and must precede them.

       -d
           Ascii table in decimal.

       -x
           Ascii table in hex.

       -o
           Ascii table in octal.

       -b
           Ascii table in binary.

       -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:

       o   Its bit pattern (binary representation).

       o   Its hex, decimal and octal representations.

       o   Its teletype mnemonic and caret-notation form (for control chars).

       o   Its backlash-escape form in C (for some control chars).

       o   Its printed form (for printables).

       o   Its full ISO official name in English.

       o   Its ISO/ECMA code table reference.

       o   Its name as an HTML/SGML entity.

       o   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.

ascii                             07/31/2017                          ASCII(1)

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