Text encodings ans escape sequences

Text encoding list

default – default console encoding (can be omitted)
scr – default screencodes (usually the same as default, a notable exception are the Commodore computers)
ascii – standard ASCII
pet or petscii – PETSCII (ASCII-like character set used by Commodore machines from VIC-20 onward)
petjp or petsciijp – PETSCII as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64
origpet or origpetscii – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with original ROMs)
oldpet or oldpetscii – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with newer ROMs)
cbmscr or petscr – Commodore screencodes
cbmscrjp or petscrjp – Commodore screencodes as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64
apple2 – Apple II charset ($A0–$DF)
bbc – BBC Micro character set
sinclair – ZX Spectrum character set
zx80 – ZX80 character set
zx81 – ZX81 character set
jis or jisx – JIS X 0201
iso_de, iso_no, iso_se, iso_yu – various variants of ISO/IEC-646
iso_dk, iso_fi – aliases for iso_no and iso_se respectively
iso15 – ISO 8859-15
latin0, latin9, iso8859_15 – aliases for iso15
msx_intl, msx_jp, msx_ru, msx_br – MSX character encoding, International, Japanese, Russian and Brazilian respectively
msx_us, msx_uk, msx_fr, msx_de – aliases for msx_intl
atascii or atari – ATASCII as seen on Atari 8-bit computers
atasciiscr or atariscr – screencodes used by Atari 8-bit computers
koi7n2 or short_koi – KOI-7 N2
vectrex – built-in Vectrex font
utf8 – UTF-8
utf16be, utf16le – UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE

When programming for Commodore, use pet for strings you're printing using standard I/O routines and petscr for strings you're copying to screen memory directly.

Escape sequences

Escape sequences allow for including characters in the string literals that would be otherwise impossible to type.

Some escape sequences may expand to multiple characters. For example, in several encodings {n} expands to {x0D}{x0A}.

Available everywhere

{q} – double quote symbol
{x00}–{xff} – a character of the given hexadecimal value
{copyright_year} – this expands to the current year in digits
{program_name} – this expands to the name of the output file without the file extension
{program_name_upper} – the same, but uppercased
{nullchar} – the null terminator for strings ("{nullchar}" is equivalent to ""z).
The exact value of {nullchar} is encoding-dependent:
- in the vectrex encoding it's {x80},
- in the zx80 encoding it's {x01},
- in the zx81 encoding it's {x0b},
- in the petscr and petscrjp encodings it's {xe0},
- in the atasciiscr encoding it's {xdb},
- in the utf16be and utf16le encodings it's exceptionally two bytes: {x00}{x00}
- in other encodings it's {x00} (this may be a subject to change in future versions).

Available only in some encodings

{apos} – apostrophe/single quote (available everywhere except for zx80 and zx81)
{n} – new line
{b} – backspace
{lbrace}, {rbrace} – opening and closing curly brace (only in encodings that support braces)
{up}, {down}, {left}, {right} – control codes for moving the cursor
{white}, {black}, {red}, {green}, {blue}, {cyan}, {yellow}, {purple} – control codes for changing the text color
{bgwhite}, {bgblack}, {bgred}, {bggreen}, {bgblue}, {bgcyan}, {bgyellow}, {bgpurple} – control codes for changing the text background color
{reverse}, {reverseoff} – inverted mode on/off
{yen}, {pound}, {cent}, {euro}, {copy} – yen symbol, pound symbol, cent symbol, euro symbol, copyright symbol
{u0000}–{u1fffff} – Unicode codepoint (available in UTF encodings only)

Character availability

Encoding	lowercase letters	backslash	currencies	intl	card suits
`pet`,	yes¹	no	£	none	yes¹
`origpet`	yes¹	yes		none	yes¹
`oldpet`	yes²	yes		none	yes²
`petscr`	yes¹	no	£	none	yes¹
`petjp`	no	no	¥	katakana³	yes³
`petscrjp`	no	no	¥	katakana³	yes³
`sinclair`, `bbc`	yes	yes	£	none	no
`zx80`, `zx81`	no	no	£	none	no
`apple2`	no	yes		none	no
`atascii`	yes	yes		none	yes
`atasciiscr`	yes	yes		none	yes
`jis`	yes	no	¥	both kana	no
`iso15`	yes	yes	€¢£¥	Western	no
`msx_intl`,`msx_br`	yes	yes	¢£¥	Western	yes
`msx_jp`	yes	no	¥	katakana	yes
`msx_ru`	yes	yes		Russian⁴	yes
`koi7n2`	no	yes		Russian⁵	no
`vectrex`	no	yes		none	no
`utf*`	yes	yes	all	all	yes
all the rest	yes	yes		none	no

pet, origpet and petscr cannot display card suit symbols and lowercase letters at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which lowercase letters are displayed as uppercase and uppercase letters are displayed as symbols.
oldpet cannot display card suit symbols and lowercase letters at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which lowercase letters are displayed as symbols.
petjp and petscrjp cannot display card suit symbols and katakana at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which katakana is displayed as symbols.
Letter Ё and uppercase Ъ are not available.
Only uppercase. Letters Ё and Ъ are not available.

If the encoding does not support lowercase letters (e.g. apple2, petjp, petscrjp, koi7n2, vectrex), then text and character literals containing lowercase letters are automatically converted to uppercase. Only unaccented Latin and Cyrillic letters will be converted as such. Accented Latin letters will not be converted and will fail to compile without -flenient-encoding.
To detect if your default encoding does not support lowercase letters, test 'A' == 'a'.

Escape sequence availability

Encoding	new line	braces	backspace	cursor movement	text colour	reverse	background colour
`pet`,`petjp`	yes	no	no	yes	yes	yes	no
`origpet`	yes	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
`oldpet`	yes	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
`petscr`, `petscrjp`	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
`sinclair`	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
`zx80`,`zx81`	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no
`ascii`, `iso_*`	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
`iso15`	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
`apple2`	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
`atascii`	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no
`atasciiscr`	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
`msx_*`	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
`koi7n2`	yes	no	yes	no	no	no	no
`vectrex`	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
`utf*`	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
all the rest	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no