On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 01:09:53PM -0500, Dennis McCarthy wrote:
A technical question:
Exactly what characters make up 7-bit ascii? I presume it is 128 (2 to the 7th power). So logically any character I can generate by typing Alt+0000 thro' Alt+0127 (in MS Windows) is kosher in a 7-bit ASCII text.
Specifically I want to know if I can us "|" (the character made by hitting Shift+backslash on a standard US keyboard, or Alt+0124).
Generally, are the following (Alt+0000 thro' Alt+0127) always okay? ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _ ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~
Depends what you mean by "okay". Anything in the range 32 (space) through 126 (tilde) is definitely OK, and common. Your specific character, 124, is commonly used by people who want to create a box-like layout. Below 32, chars 10 and 13 (LF and CR) are definitely necessary at the end of every line, but character 9 (Tab) is specifically discouraged, because of the undefined effect it may have on different viewing or editing programs. Other characters below space (32) . . . well, I imagine someone could come up with a useful reason to use one or more of them, in some special situation, but I can't think of one right now. Ditto 127, whose only reason for existence is to delete another character. jim