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ASCII FS/RS/GS/US do not have a visual representation, and users do not know how to enter them. That means they're essentially for binary-like encodings -- the
by cryptonector 7y ago
ASCII FS/RS/GS/US do not have a visual representation, and users do not know how to enter them. That means they're essentially for binary-like encodings -- they're not really text if users can't see or enter them easily.
But users can see the commas in CSV, and they can trivially enter them. Yeah, the result is messy.
The lesson here is that the separator control characters should have been visual and had a visual indicator on keyboard keycaps to indicate how to enter them. Because they aren't and didn't, they are essentially useless for text.
EDIT: I do happen to know how to enter these on *nix systems. The ascii(7) man page tells you how:
034 28 1C FS (file separator) 134 92 5C \ '\\'
035 29 1D GS (group separator) 135 93 5D ]
036 30 1E RS (record separator) 136 94 5E ^
037 31 1F US (unit separator) 137 95 5F _
so FS is ^\ (which you have to be careful does not cause the tty to generate SIGQUIT -- you have to ^V^\), ^], ^^, and ^_. That is, <control>\, <control>], <control>^, and <control><shift>-. On U.S. keyboards anyways.