1ASCII(1)                                                              ASCII(1)
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NAME

6       ascii - report character aliases
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SYNOPSIS

9       ascii [-dxohv] [-t] [char-alias...]
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OPTIONS

13       Called  with  no options, ascii behaves like `ascii -h'. Options are as
14       follows:
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17       Script-friendly mode, emits only ISO/decimal/hex/octal/binary encodings
18       of the character.
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21       Parse multiple characters. Convenient way of parsing strings.
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24       Ascii table in decimal.
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27       Ascii table in hex.
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30       Ascii table in octal.
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33       Show summary of options and a simple ASCII table.
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36       Show version of program.
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DESCRIPTION

40       Characters in the ASCII set can have many aliases, depending on con‐
41       text. A character's possible names include:
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44       *      Its bit pattern (binary representation).
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47       *      Its hex, decimal and octal representations.
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50       *      Its teletype mnemonic and caret-notation form (for control
51              chars).
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54       *      Its backlash-escape form in C (for some control chars).
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57       *      Its printed form (for printables).
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60       *      Its full ISO official name in English.
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63       *      Its ISO/ECMA code table reference.
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66       *      Its name as an HTML/SGML entity.
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69       *      Slang and other names in wide use for it among hackers.
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72       This utility accepts command-line strings and tries to interpret them
73       as one of the above. When it finds a value, it prints all of the names
74       of the character. The constructs in the following list can be used to
75       specify character values. If an argument could be interpreted in two or
76       more ways, names for all the different characters it might be are
77       dumped.
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80       character
81              Any character not described by one of the following conventions
82              represents the character itself.
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85       ^character
86              A caret followed by a character.
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89       \character
90              A backslash followed by certain special characters (abfnrtv).
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93       mnemonic
94              An ASCII teletype mnemonic.
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97       hexadecimal
98              A hexadecimal (hex) sequence consists of one or two case-insen‐
99              sitive hex digit characters (01234567890abcdef). To ensure hex
100              interpretation use hexh,  0xhex,  xhex or \xhex.
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103       decimal
104              A decimal sequence consists of one, two or three decimal digit
105              characters (0123456789). To ensure decimal interpretation use
106              \0ddecimal,  ddecimal, or \ddecimal.
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109       octal  An octal sequence consists of one, two or three octal digit
110              characters (01234567). To ensure octal interpretation use \oc‐
111              tal,  0ooctal,  ooctal, or \ooctal.
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114       bit pattern
115              A bit pattern (binary) sequence consists of one to eight binary
116              digit characters (01). To ensure bit interpretation use 0bbit
117              pattern,  bbit pattern or \bbit pattern.
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120       ISO/ECMA code
121              A ISO/ECMA code sequence consists of one or two decimal digit
122              characters, a slash, and one or two decimal digit characters.
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125       name   An official ASCII or slang name.
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128       The slang names recognized and printed out are from a rather comprehen‐
129       sive list that first appeared on USENET in early 1990 and has been con‐
130       tinuously updated since. Mnemonics recognized and printed include the
131       official ASCII set, some official ISO names (where those differ) and a
132       few common-use alternatives (such as NL for LF). HTML/SGML entity names
133       are also printed when applicable. All comparisons are case-insensitive,
134       and dashes are mapped to spaces. Any unrecognized arguments or out of
135       range values are silently ignored. Note that the -s option will not
136       recognize 'long' names, as it cannot differentiate them from other
137       parts of the string.
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140       For correct results, be careful to stringize or quote shell metacharac‐
141       ters in arguments (especially backslash).
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144       This utility is particularly handy for interpreting cc(1)'s ugly octal
145       `invalid-character' messages, or when coding anything to do with serial
146       communications. As a side effect it serves as a handy base-converter
147       for random 8-bit values.
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AUTHOR

151       Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>; November 1990 (home page at
152       http://www.catb.org/~esr/: http://www.catb.org/~esr/). Reproduce, use,
153       and modify as you like as long as you don't remove this authorship no‐
154       tice. Ioannis E. Tambouras <ioannis@debian.org> added command options
155       and minor enhancements. Brian J. Ginsbach <ginsbach@sgi.com> fixed sev‐
156       eral bugs and expanded the man page. David N. Welton <davidw@efn.org>
157       added the -s option. Matej Vela corrected the ISO names. Dave Capella
158       contributed the idea of listing HTML/SGML entities.
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163                                                                      ASCII(1)
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