Special ASCII characters

Description

You can include special ASCII characters in strings. For example, you might want to include a tab in a string to ensure proper spacing or a bullet to indicate a list item. The tilde character (~) introduces special characters. The tab is one of the common ASCII characters that can be entered by typing a tilde followed by a single keystroke. The bullet must be entered by typing a tilde followed by the decimal, hexadecimal, or octal ASCII value that represents it.

Syntax

Follow the guidelines in the following table.

In this category

To specify this

Enter this

More information

Common ASCII characters

Newline

~n

 

 

Tab

~t

 

 

Vertical tab

~v

 

 

Carriage return

~r

 

 

Form feed

~f

 

 

Backspace

~b

 

 

Double quote

~"

 

 

Single quote

~' 

 

 

Tilde

~~

 

Any ASCII character

Decimal

~###

### = a 3-digit number from 000 to 255

 

Hexadecimal

~h##

## = a 2-digit hexadecimal number from 01 to FF

 

Octal

~o###

### = a 3-digit octal number from 000 to 377


Examples

Entering ASCII characters

Here is how to use special characters in strings:

String

Description

"dog~n"

A string containing the word dog followed by a newline character

"dog~tcat~ttiger"

A string containing the word dog, a tab character, the word cat, another tab character, and the word tiger


Using decimal, hexadecimal, and octal values

Here is how to indicate a bullet (*) in a string by using the decimal, hexadecimal, and octal ASCII values:

Value

Description

"~249"

The ASCII character with decimal value 249

"~hF9"

The ASCII character with hexadecimal value F9

"~o371"

The ASCII character with octal value 371