Reference: Non Printable Characters List
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Non printable characters on Linux, MacOS or Windows are characters which do not represent a symbol, character, or number which is part of the text of the document, but rather are used for things like character encoding. A full list of all non-printable characters along with their decimal and hexidecimal codes are shown below.
How to find non-printable characters in a file
If you need to see all nonprintable characters in a document, you can use cat -v filename.txt in terminal to find them, where filename.txt is the file you want to show. The contents of the file, along with the non-printable characters in caret notation will be shown in your terminal window.
For a full list of the caret notation for non-printable characters, see the list below.
Full Non Printable Characters List
Below, find a list of all non printable characters, along with their binary, decimal and hexadecimal codes. You can also find their escape sequence (used in many programming languages), and caret notation (used with cat -v).
| Name | Binary | Decimal | Hexadecimal | Octal | Caret Notation | Escape Sequence |
| Null | 000 0000 | 0 | 00 | 000 | ^@ | \0 |
| Start of Heading (SOH) | 000 0001 | 1 | 01 | 001 | ^A | |
| Start of Text (STX) | 000 0010 | 2 | 02 | 002 | ^B | |
| End of Text (ETX) | 000 0011 | 3 | 03 | 003 | ^C | |
| End of Transmission (EOT) | 000 0100 | 4 | 04 | 004 | ^D | |
| Enquiry (ENQ) | 000 0101 | 5 | 05 | 005 | ^E | |
| Acknowledgement (ACK) | 000 0110 | 6 | 06 | 006 | ^F | |
| Beep (BEL) | 000 0111 | 7 | 07 | 007 | ^G | \a |
| Backspace (BS) | 000 1000 | 8 | 08 | 010 | ^H | \b |
| Horizontal Tab (HT) | 000 1001 | 9 | 09 | 011 | ^I | \t |
| Line Feed (LF) | 000 1010 | 10 | 0A | 012 | ^J | \n |
| Vertical Tab (VT) | 000 1011 | 11 | 0B | 013 | ^K | \v |
| Form Feed (FF) | 000 1100 | 12 | 0C | 014 | ^L | \f |
| Carriage Return (CR) | 000 1101 | 13 | 0D | 015 | ^M | \r |
| Shift Out (SO) | 000 1110 | 14 | 0E | 016 | ^N | |
| Shift In (SI) | 000 1111 | 15 | 0F | 017 | ^O | |
| Data Link Escape (DLE) | 001 0000 | 16 | 10 | 020 | ^P | |
| Device Control 1 (DC1, often XON) | 001 0001 | 17 | 11 | 021 | ^Q | |
| Device Control 2 (DC2) | 001 0010 | 18 | 12 | 022 | ^R | |
| Device Control 3 (DC3, often XOFF) | 001 0011 | 19 | 13 | 023 | ^S | |
| Device Control 4 (DC4) | 001 0100 | 20 | 14 | 024 | ^T | |
| Negative Acknowledgement (NAK) | 001 0101 | 21 | 15 | 025 | ^U | |
| Synchronous Idle (SYN) | 001 0110 | 22 | 16 | 026 | ^V | |
| End of Transmission Block (ETB) | 001 0111 | 23 | 17 | 027 | ^W | |
| Cancel (CAN) | 001 1000 | 24 | 18 | 030 | ^X | |
| End of Medium (EM) | 001 1001 | 25 | 19 | 031 | ^Y | |
| Substitute (SUB) | 001 1010 | 26 | 1A | 032 | ^Z | |
| Escape (ESC) | 001 1011 | 27 | 1B | 033 | ^[ | \e |
| File Separator (FS) | 001 1100 | 28 | 1C | 034 | ^\ | |
| Group Separator (GS) | 001 1101 | 29 | 1D | 035 | ^] | |
| Record Separator (RS) | 001 1110 | 30 | 1E | 036 | ^^ | |
| Unit Separator (US) | 001 1111 | 31 | 1F | 037 | ^_ | |
| Delete (DEL) | 111 1111 | 127 | 7F | 177 | ^? |
More Tips and Tricks for Linux
- Reference: Non Printable Characters List
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- How the ls command works on Linux
- How the cd command works in Linux
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