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Text encodings and escape sequences

Defining custom encodings

Every platform is defined in an .tbl file with an appropriate name. The file is looked up in the directories on the include path, first directly, then in the encoding subdirectory.

TODO: document the file format.

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

  • petscii or pet – PETSCII (ASCII-like character set used by Commodore machines from VIC-20 onward)

  • petsciijp or petjp – PETSCII as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64

  • origpetscii or origpet – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with original ROMs)

  • oldpetscii or oldpet – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with newer ROMs)

  • geos_de – text encoding used by the German version of GEOS for C64

  • cbmscr or petscr – Commodore screencodes

  • cbmscrjp or petscrjp – Commodore screencodes as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64

  • apple2 – original Apple II charset ($A0–$DF)

  • apple2e – Apple IIe charset

  • apple2c – alternative Apple IIc charset

  • apple2gs – Apple IIgs charset

  • macroman – Macintosh Western Latin charset

  • 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

  • dmcs – DEC Multinational Character Set

  • lics – Lotus International Character Set

  • iso8859_1, iso8859_2, iso8859_3, iso8859_4, iso8859_5, iso8859_7, iso8859_9, iso8859_10, iso8859_13, iso8859_14, iso8859_15, iso8859_13 – ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-2, ISO 8859-3, ISO 8859-4, ISO 8859-5, ISO 8859-7, ISO 8859-9, ISO 8859-10, ISO 8859-13, ISO 8859-14, ISO 8859-15, ISO 8859-16,

    • iso1, latin1 – aliases for iso8859_1
    • iso2, latin2 – aliases for iso8859_2
    • iso3, latin3 – aliases for iso8859_3
    • iso4, latin4 – aliases for iso8859_4
    • iso5 – alias for iso8859_5
    • iso7 – alias for iso8859_7
    • iso9, latin5, – aliases for iso8859_9
    • iso10, latin6 – aliases for iso8859_10
    • iso13, latin7 – aliases for iso8859_13
    • iso14, latin8 – aliases for iso8859_14
    • iso_15, latin9, latin0 – aliases for iso8859_15
    • iso16, latin10 – aliases for iso8859_16

  • brascii – BraSCII

  • cp437, cp850, cp851, cp852, cp855, cp858, cp866 – DOS codepages 437, 850, 851, 852, 855, 858, 866

  • mazovia – Mazovia encoding

  • kamenicky – Kamenický encoding

  • cp1250, cp1251, cp1252, cp1253, cp1254, cp1257 – Windows codepages 1250, 1251, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1257

  • 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

  • cpc_en, cpc_fr, cpc_es, cpc_da – Amstrad CPC character encoding, English, French, Spanish and Danish respectively

  • pcw or amstrad_cpm – Amstrad CP/M encoding, the US variant (language 0), as used on PCW machines

  • pokemon1en, pokemon1jp, pokemon1es, pokemon1fr – text encodings used in 1st generation Pokémon games, English, Japanese, Spanish/Italian and French/German respectively

    • pokemon1it, pokemon1de – aliases for pokemon1es and pokemon1fr respectively

  • 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

  • koi8r, koi8u, koi8ru, koi8e, koi8f, koi8t – various variants of KOI-8

  • vectrex – built-in Vectrex font

  • galaksija – text encoding used on Galaksija computers

  • trs80m1 – text encoding used on TRS-80 Model 1

  • trs80m3 – text encoding used on TRS-80 Model 3

  • coco – text encoding used on Tandy Color Computer

  • cocoscr – Tandy Color Computer screencodes

  • z1013 – text encodind used on Robotron Z1013

  • ebcdic – EBCDIC codepage 037 (partial coverage)

  • utf8 – UTF-8

  • utf16be, utf16le – UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE

  • utf32be, utf32le – UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE

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

When programming for Atari, use atascii for strings you're printing using standard I/O routines and atasciiscr 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

  • {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 apple2e encoding it's {x7f},
    • in the atasciiscr encoding it's {xdb},
    • in the pokemon1* encodings it's {x50},
    • in the cocoscr encoding it's exceptionally two bytes: {xd0}
    • in the utf16be and utf16le encodings it's exceptionally two bytes: {x00}{x00}
    • in the utf32be and utf32le encodings it's exceptionally four bytes: {x00}{x00}{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, zx81 and galaksija)

  • {q} – double quote symbol (available everywhere except for pokemon1* encodings)

  • {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 (petscii, petsciijp, sinclair only)

  • {bgwhite}, {bgblack}, {bgred}, {bggreen}, {bgblue}, {bgcyan}, {bgyellow}, {bgpurple} – control codes for changing the text background color (sinclair only)

  • {reverse}, {reverseoff} – inverted mode on/off

  • {yen}, {pound}, {cent}, {euro}, {copy} – yen symbol, pound symbol, cent symbol, euro symbol, copyright symbol

  • {nbsp}, {shy} – non-breaking space, soft hyphen

  • {pi} – letter π

  • {u0000}–{u1fffff} – Unicode codepoint (available in UTF encodings only)

Character availability

For ISO/DOS/Windows/UTF encodings, consult external sources.

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
geos_de yes no no
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
z1013 yes yes none yes
jis yes no ¥ both kana no
dmcs,lics yes yes ¢£¥ Western no
brascii,macroman 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
koi8* yes yes Russian no
cpc_en yes yes £ none yes
cpc_es yes yes Spanish⁶ yes
cpc_fr yes no £ French⁷ yes
cpc_da yes no £ Nor/Dan. yes
vectrex no yes none no
coco,cocoscr no yes none no
pokemon1jp no no both kana no
pokemon1en yes no none no
pokemon1fr yes no Ger/Fre. no
pokemon1es yes no Spa/Ita. no
galaksija no no Yugoslav⁸ no

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Letter Ё and uppercase Ъ are not available.

  5. Only uppercase. Letters Ё and Ъ are not available.

  6. No accented vowels.

  7. Some accented vowels are not available.

  8. Letter Đ is 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

The table below may be incomplete.

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
geos_de no no no no no yes 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
iso8869_*, cp* yes yes yes no no no no
apple2 no yes no no no no no
apple2 no no no no no no no
apple2e no yes no no no no no
apple2gs 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
koi8* yes yes yes no no no no
vectrex no no no no no no no
coco yes no yes no no no no
cocoscr 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