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.

Table 1-2: Using special ASCII characters in strings

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