My going assumption is that arbitrary binary data should be in a binary format. Feel free to correct me, but I figure that as long as data can be from 0x00 to

My going assumption is that arbitrary binary data should be in a binary format. Feel free to correct me, but I figure that as long as data can be from 0x00 to 0xFF per byte, no format that uses characters in that range will ever be safe. I’m not a big C developer but I figure the null terminated strings have the same limitation. But if its something entered by keyboard you should be ok to use control codes. Personally, I find tab and return to be fine for text driven stuff. Shows up in an editor just like intented.