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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).