[Python-Dev] ascii.py?

[Eric S. Raymond]

Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org>:
> I took a quick look at it. Doesn't seem too bad, but I can't think of
> anything that I've done in a long while that would require it. So I can't
> really say "wow! put that baby in the distro!"

It starts to get pretty useful in conjunction with curses -- for example, in
writing interpreters for character-at-a-time command loops.

I have a new version that adds the following:

\begin{funcdesc}{ascii}{c}
Return the ASCII value corresponding to the low 7 bits of c.
\end{funcdesc}

The following function takes either a single-character string or
integer byte value; it returns a string.

\begin{funcdesc}{unctrl}{c}
Return a string representation of the ASCII character c.  If c is
printable, this string is the character itself.  If the character
is a control character (0x00-0x1f) the string consists of a caret
(^) followed by the corresponding uppercase letter.  If the character
is an ASCII delete (0x7f) the string is "^?".  If the character has
its meta bit (0x80) set, the meta bit is stripped, the preceding rules
applied, and "!" prepended to the result.
\end{funcdesc}

Finally, the module supplies a 33-element string array 
called controlnames that contains the ASCII mnemonics for the
thirty-two ASCII control characters from 0 (NUL) to 0x1f (US),
in order, plus the mnemonic "SP" for space.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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