1ASCII(1)                       Development Tools                      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

12       Called with no options, ascii behaves like `ascii -h'. Options are as
13       follows:
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15       -t
16           Script-friendly mode, emits only ISO/decimal/hex/octal/binary
17           encodings of the character.
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19       -s
20           Parse multiple characters. Convenient way of parsing strings.
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22       -a
23           Print in vertical aspect (4 columns by 16 rows) rather than 16x4.
24           This option combines only with -d -o -x -b and must precede them.
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26       -d
27           Ascii table in decimal.
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29       -x
30           Ascii table in hex.
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32       -o
33           Ascii table in octal.
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35       -b
36           Ascii table in binary.
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38       -h, -?
39           Show summary of options and a simple ASCII table.
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41       -v
42           Show version of program.
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DESCRIPTION

45       Characters in the ASCII set can have many aliases, depending on
46       context. A character's possible names include:
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48       ·   Its bit pattern (binary representation).
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50       ·   Its hex, decimal and octal representations.
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52       ·   Its teletype mnemonic and caret-notation form (for control chars).
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54       ·   Its backlash-escape form in C (for some control chars).
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56       ·   Its printed form (for printables).
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58       ·   Its full ISO official name in English.
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60       ·   Its ISO/ECMA code table reference.
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62       ·   Its name as an HTML/SGML entity.
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64       ·   Slang and other names in wide use for it among hackers.
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66       This utility accepts command-line strings and tries to interpret them
67       as one of the above. When it finds a value, it prints all of the names
68       of the character. The constructs in the following list can be used to
69       specify character values. If an argument could be interpreted in two or
70       more ways, names for all the different characters it might be are
71       dumped.
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73       character
74           Any character not described by one of the following conventions
75           represents the character itself.
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77       ^character
78           A caret followed by a character.
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80       \[abfnrtv0]
81           A backslash followed by certain special characters (abfnrtv).
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83       mnemonic
84           An ASCII teletype mnemonic.
85
86       hexadecimal
87           A hexadecimal (hex) sequence consists of one or two
88           case-insensitive hex digit characters (01234567890abcdef). To
89           ensure hex interpretation use hexh, 0xhex, xhex or \xhex.
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91       decimal
92           A decimal sequence consists of one, two or three decimal digit
93           characters (0123456789). To ensure decimal interpretation use
94           \0ddecimal, ddecimal, or \ddecimal.
95
96       octal
97           An octal sequence consists of one, two or three octal digit
98           characters (01234567). To ensure octal interpretation use \<octal>,
99           0o<octal>, o<octal>, or \o<octal>.
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101       bit pattern
102           A bit pattern (binary) sequence consists of one to eight binary
103           digit characters (01). To ensure bit interpretation use 0b<bit
104           pattern>, b<bit pattern> or \b<bit pattern>.
105
106       ISO/ECMA code
107           An ISO/ECMA code sequence consists of one or two decimal digit
108           characters, a slash, and one or two decimal digit characters.
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110       name
111           An official ASCII or (unofficial) slang name.
112
113       The slang names recognized and printed out are from a rather
114       comprehensive list that first appeared on USENET in early 1990 and has
115       been continuously updated since. Mnemonics recognized and printed
116       include the official ASCII set, some official ISO names (where those
117       differ) and a few common-use alternatives (such as NL for LF).
118       HTML/SGML entity names are also printed when applicable. All
119       comparisons are case-insensitive, and dashes are mapped to spaces. Any
120       unrecognized arguments or out of range values are silently ignored.
121       Note that the -s option will not recognize 'long' names, as it cannot
122       differentiate them from other parts of the string.
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124       For correct results, be careful to stringize or quote shell
125       metacharacters in arguments (especially backslash).
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127       This utility is particularly handy for interpreting cc(1)'s ugly octal
128       `invalid-character' messages, or when coding anything to do with serial
129       communications. As a side effect it serves as a handy base-converter
130       for random 8-bit values.
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AUTHOR

133       Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>; November 1990 (home page at
134       http://www.catb.org/~esr/). Reproduce, use, and modify as you like as
135       long as you don't remove this authorship notice. Ioannis E. Tambouras
136       <ioannis@debian.org> added command options and minor enhancements.
137       Brian J. Ginsbach <ginsbach@sgi.com> fixed several bugs and expanded
138       the man page. David N. Welton <davidw@efn.org> added the -s option.
139       Matej Vela corrected the ISO names. Dave Capella contributed the idea
140       of listing HTML/SGML entities.
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144ascii                             07/31/2017                          ASCII(1)