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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/manual.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/manual.txt | 31 |
1 files changed, 27 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/doc/manual.txt b/doc/manual.txt index 88a7f3815..d9849f044 100644 --- a/doc/manual.txt +++ b/doc/manual.txt @@ -312,13 +312,36 @@ Character literals ------------------ Character literals are enclosed in single quotes ``''`` and can contain the -same escape sequences as strings - with one exception: ``\n`` is not allowed -as it may be wider than one character (often it is the pair CR/LF for example). +same escape sequences as strings - with one exception: `newline`:idx: (``\n``) +is not allowed as it may be wider than one character (often it is the pair +CR/LF for example). Here are the valid `escape sequences`:idx: for character +literals: + +================== =================================================== + Escape sequence Meaning +================== =================================================== + ``\r``, ``\c`` `carriage return`:idx: + ``\l`` `line feed`:idx: + ``\f`` `form feed`:idx: + ``\t`` `tabulator`:idx: + ``\v`` `vertical tabulator`:idx: + ``\\`` `backslash`:idx: + ``\"`` `quotation mark`:idx: + ``\'`` `apostrophe`:idx: + ``\`` '0'..'9'+ `character with decimal value d`:idx:; + all decimal digits directly + following are used for the character + ``\a`` `alert`:idx: + ``\b`` `backspace`:idx: + ``\e`` `escape`:idx: `[ESC]`:idx: + ``\x`` HH `character with hex value HH`:idx:; + exactly two hex digits are allowed +================== =================================================== + A character is not an Unicode character but a single byte. The reason for this is efficiency: for the overwhelming majority of use-cases, the resulting programs will still handle UTF-8 properly as UTF-8 was specially designed for -this. -Another reason is that Nimrod can thus support ``array[char, int]`` or +this. Another reason is that Nimrod can thus support ``array[char, int]`` or ``set[char]`` efficiently as many algorithms rely on this feature. |