ASCII(1) ASCII(1)
NAME
ascii, unicode - interpret ASCII, Unicode characters
SYNOPSIS
ascii [ -8 ] [ -oxdbn ] [ -nct ] [ text ]
unicode hexmin-hexmax
unicode [ -t ] hex [ ... ]
unicode [ -n ] characters
look hex /lib/unicode
DESCRIPTION
Ascii prints the ASCII values corresponding to characters
and vice versa; under the -8 option, the ISO Latin-1 exten-
sions (codes 0200-0377) are included. The values are inter-
preted in a settable numeric base; -o specifies octal, -d
decimal, -x hexadecimal (the default), and -bn base n.
With no arguments, ascii prints a table of the character set
in the specified base. Characters of text are converted to
their ASCII values, one per line. If, however, the first
text argument is a valid number in the specified base, con-
version goes the opposite way. Control characters are
printed as two- or three-character mnemonics. Other options
are:
-n Force numeric output.
-c Force character output.
-t Convert from numbers to running text; do not interpret
control characters or insert newlines.
Unicode is similar; it converts between UTF and Unicode (see
utf(6)). If given a range of hexadecimal numbers, unicode
prints a table of the specified Unicode characters - their
values and UTF representations. Otherwise it translates
from UTF to numeric value or vice versa, depending on the
appearance of the supplied text; the -n option forces
numeric output to avoid ambiguity with numeric characters.
If converting to UTF , the characters are printed one per
line unless the -t flag is set, in which case the output is
a single string containing only the specified characters.
Unlike ascii, unicode treats no characters specially.
The output of ascii and unicode may be unhelpful if the
characters printed are not available in the current font.
Page 1 Plan 9 (printed 12/22/24)
ASCII(1) ASCII(1)
The file /lib/unicode contains a table of characters and
descriptions, sorted in hexadecimal order, suitable for
look(1) on the lowercase hex values of characters.
EXAMPLES
ascii -d
Print the ASCII table base 10.
unicode p
Print the hex value of `p'.
unicode 2300
Show which character is hex 2300.
unicode 2300-232c
Print a table of miscellaneous technical characters.
look 039 /lib/unicode
See the start of the Greek alphabet's encoding in Uni-
code.
FILES
/lib/unicode table of characters and descriptions.
SEE ALSO
tcs(1), utf(6), font(6)
Page 2 Plan 9 (printed 12/22/24)