Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!grkermit!mit-vax!eagle!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: '\^Q' as an escape for control characters Message-ID: <30@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Jun-83 22:46:39 EDT Article-I.D.: cbosgd.30 Posted: Sun Jun 5 22:46:39 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jun-83 23:17:08 EDT References: <170@nbires.UUCP> Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus Lines: 12 The ^X notation is very useful in ASCII, but meaningless in some other character set. C does not assume ASCII (although it does assume a newline character, which is a pretty significant assumption). There is an EBCDIC implementation of C. Thus, the octal escape seems like a more appropriate mechanism, although it is a pain for us programmers. You could always use #define CTRL(x) ('x' & 037) As to the EMACS documentation, why do you assume that \^X is a 3 character sequence? I would interpret that as the two character sequence backslash control-X (since, for typographical reasons, it's hard to print a control X character on a piece of paper).