Re: Backslash n [OT] was Line Separator and Paragraph Separator

From: Jonathan Coxhead (jonathan@doves.demon.co.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 21 2003 - 07:00:19 CST


   On 21 Oct 2003, at 12:01, Jill Ramonsky wrote:

> I would be more than grateful if someone could point me in the direction
> of a DEFINITVE specification which claims this is not the case, that the
> interpretion of "\n" as anything other than LF may be considered
> conformant behaviour.

   The C standard is the relevant place ...

5.2.2 Character display semantics

1 [...]

2 Alphabetic escape sequences representing nongraphic characters in the
execution character set are intended to produce actions on display devices as
follows:

\a (alert) Produces an audible or visible alert. The active position shall not
be changed.

\b (backspace) Moves the active position to the previous position on the
current line. If the active position is at the initial position of a line, the
behavior is unspecified.

\f (form feed) Moves the active position to the initial position at the start
of the next logical page.

\n (new line) Moves the active position to the initial position of the next
line.

\r (carriage return) Moves the active position to the initial position of the
current line.

\t (horizontal tab) Moves the active position to the next horizontal tabulation
position on the current line. If the active position is at or past the last defined
horizontal tabulation position, the behavior is unspecified.

\v (vertical tab) Moves the active position to the initial position of the next
vertical tabulation position. If the active position is at or past the last
defined vertical tabulation position, the behavior is unspecified.

3 Each of these escape sequences shall produce a unique implementation-defined
value which can be stored in a single char object. *** The external
representations in a text file need not be identical to the internal
representations, and are outside the scope of this International Standard. ***

   (My emphasis ... JRC)

   The execution character set is itself also not specified ... it need not be
ASCII.

   Hope this helps ...

        /|
 o o o (_|/
        /|
       (_/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 18 2007 - 15:54:24 CST