Thanks, Kevin Exactly what I wanted to know!. See how easy life can be? Bob Eaton Kevin Buettner wrote: > > On Feb 27, 9:37am, Robert N. Eaton wrote: > > > Thanks, Shawn, I thought it was just me. I tried the alt+ method both at > > the bash prompt and in vi. > > I haven't been following this thread closely, but vile and xvile (which > are vi-like editors) allow you to enter arbitrary 8-bit characters. Below > is the relevant information from vile's help document. Both vile and > xvile are available on Red Hat's Power Tools CD. (But if you want > Perl support, you have to build it yourself.) For more information > regarding this editor, see http://vile.cx. > > 8-Bit Operation > --------------- > vile allows input, manipulation, and display of all 256 possible > byte-wide characters. (Double-wide characters are not supported.) > > Output > ------ > By default, characters with the high bit set (decimal value 128 or > greater) will display as hex (or octal; see "non-printing- octal" > above) sequences, e.g. \xA5. A range of characters which should > display as themselves (that is, characters understood by the user's > display terminal) may be given using the "printing-low" and > "printing-high" settings (see above). Useful values for these > settings are 160 and 255, which correspond to the printable range > of the ISO-Latin-1 character set. > > Input > ----- > > There are basically three ways of getting 8-bit characters into > a vile buffer: > > Directly -- if the user's input device (i.e. the terminal or > xterm) can generate all characters, and if the terminal > settings are such that these characters pass through > unmolested, then vile will happily incorporate them into the > user's text, or act on them if they are bound to functions. On > an xterm, try "stty cs8 -parenb -istrip". Real serial lines > may take more convincing, at both ends, but use that stty > command as a starting point. > > As numbers -- the ^V prefix (or, more correctly, the key bound to > the "quote-next-character" function), if followed by up to > three digits, will insert a character whose value is that > number (no greater than 255) into the buffer. The number may > be entered in decimal (^VNNN), octal with a leading '0' (^V0NNN), > or hex with a leading 'x' (^VxNN). > > As digraphs -- Perhaps more useful to some people is using a set of > ":map!" commands to aid insertion of 8-bit text. The file > "digraphs.rc" distributed with the vile source contains a set > of mappings which should aid the input of ISO 8859/1 text. As > examples, the mappings in digraphs.rc allow one to type ^KU" or > ^Ku" to get an umlaut character, ^K12 to get the little '1/2' > symbol, ^KY- to get the Yen currency symbol, or ^K:- to get an > arithmetic division symbol. > > Users who have no need to enter 8-bit text may want access to the > meta-bound functions while in insert mode as well as command mode. > The mode "meta-insert-bindings" controls whether functions bound to > meta- keys (characters with the high bit set) are executed only in > command mode, or in both command and insert modes. In either case, > if a character is _not_ bound to a function, then it will be > self-inserting when in insert mode. (To bind to a meta key in the > .vilerc file, one may specify it as itself, or in hex or octal, or > with the shorthand 'M-c' where c is the corresponding character > without the high bit set. > > (Although it is possible to edit and view all 256 characters, it is > currently impossible to _search_ for a string that contains the NULL > character, since this is used internally to terminate the search > string.) > > ________________________________________________ > See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail. > > Plug-discuss mailing list - Plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss