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

                                     03/16/2011

     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.

          -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).

          *

                                        - 1 -         Formatted:  March 18, 2011

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

                                     03/16/2011

              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.

          \character
              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,
              0ooctal, ooctal, or \ooctal.

                                        - 2 -         Formatted:  March 18, 2011

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

                                     03/16/2011

          bit pattern
              A bit pattern (binary) sequence consists of one to eight binary
              digit characters (01). To ensure bit interpretation use 0bbit
              pattern, bbit pattern or \bbit pattern.

          ISO/ECMA code
              A 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 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@snark.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 18, 2011