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 ASCII(1)                           ascii                           ASCII(1)
 Development Tools                                         Development Tools

                                 07/31/2017



 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:

      +   Its bit pattern (binary representation).

      +   Its hex, decimal and octal representations.

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




                                    - 1 -         Formatted:  March 28, 2024






 ASCII(1)                           ascii                           ASCII(1)
 Development Tools                                         Development Tools

                                 07/31/2017



      +   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



                                    - 2 -         Formatted:  March 28, 2024






 ASCII(1)                           ascii                           ASCII(1)
 Development Tools                                         Development Tools

                                 07/31/2017



          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
      m[blue]http://www.catb.org/~esr/m[]). 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.














                                    - 3 -         Formatted:  March 28, 2024