Reference: Non-Printable Characters List
Let's look at the full list of non-printable characters, along with what they are.
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Join For FreeNon-printable characters on Linux, macOS, or Windows are characters that do not represent a symbol, character, or number that is part of the document's text, 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 | ^? |
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