Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

Message from Steven
===================
Karolis wrote:
>
> > Why won't cat or less let you display upper ASCII?
> 
> Try less -r. It should display upper ascii, but am not absolutely
> sure.

According to:  man less
-----------------------
There are three types of characters in the input file:

  normal characters
     can be displayed directly to the screen.

  control characters
     should  not be displayed directly, but are expected
     to  be  found  in  ordinary  text  files  (such  as
     backspace and tab).

  binary characters
     should  not  be  displayed  directly  and  are  not
     expected to be found in text files.

A "character set" is simply specifies which characters  
are to be considered normal, control, and binary.  The 
LESSCHARSET environment variable may be used to select
a character set.  Possible values for LESSCHARSET are:

  ascii  
     BS,  TAB,  NL, CR, and formfeed are control characters, 
     all chars with values between 32 and 126 are normal, 
     and all others are binary.

  iso8859
     Selects  an  ISO  8859  character set.  This is the
     same as ASCII, except characters  between  160  and
     255 are treated as normal characters.

  latin1 
     Same as iso8859.

  dos    
     Selects a character set appropriate for MS-DOS.

  ebcdic 
     Selects an EBCDIC character set.

  koi8-r 
     Selects a Russian character set.

  utf-8  
     Selects the UTF-8 encoding of the ISO 10646 
     character set.

If the LESSCHARSET  environment variable is not set, the
default character set is latin1.  However, if  the  string
"UTF-8"  is found in the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE or LANG environ-
ment variables, then the default character  set  is  utf-8
instead.

If  neither  LESSCHARSET  nor LESSCHARDEF is set, but your
system supports the setlocale  interface,  less  will  use
setlocale  to  determine  the character set.  setlocale is
controlled by setting the  LANG  or  LC_CTYPE  environment
variables.

Control  and  binary  characters are displayed in standout
(reverse video).  Each  such  character  is  displayed  in
caret notation if possible (e.g. ^A for control-A).  Caret
notation is used only if inverting the 0100 bit results in
a normal printable character.  Otherwise, the character is
displayed as a hex number in angle brackets.  This  format
can be changed by setting the LESSBINFMT environment vari-
able.  LESSBINFMT may begin with a "*" and  one  character
to select the display attribute: "*k" is blinking, "*d" is
bold, "*u" is underlined, "*s" is standout,  and  "*n"  is
normal.   If  LESSBINFMT does not begin with a "*", normal
attribute is assumed.  The remainder of  LESSBINFMT  is  a
string  which may include one printf-style escape sequence
(a % followed by x, X, o, d, etc.).  For example, if LESS-
BINFMT  is  "*u[%x]",  binary  characters are displayed in
underlined  hexadecimal  surrounded  by   brackets.    The
default if no LESSBINFMT is specified is "*s<%X>".