Like ESC, the other commands can usually be generated while using cat
by pressing Ctrl with the correct character. This is the character with an ASCII value 0100 octal greater than the control code. The ASCII table in man ascii
is conveniently laid out for this:
Oct Dec Hex Char Oct Dec Hex Char
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
000 0 00 NUL '\0' (null character) 100 64 40 @
001 1 01 SOH (start of heading) 101 65 41 A
002 2 02 STX (start of text) 102 66 42 B
003 3 03 ETX (end of text) 103 67 43 C
004 4 04 EOT (end of transmission) 104 68 44 D
005 5 05 ENQ (enquiry) 105 69 45 E
006 6 06 ACK (acknowledge) 106 70 46 F
007 7 07 BEL '\a' (bell) 107 71 47 G
010 8 08 BS '\b' (backspace) 110 72 48 H
011 9 09 HT '\t' (horizontal tab) 111 73 49 I
012 10 0A LF '\n' (new line) 112 74 4A J
013 11 0B VT '\v' (vertical tab) 113 75 4B K
014 12 0C FF '\f' (form feed) 114 76 4C L
015 13 0D CR '\r' (carriage ret) 115 77 4D M
016 14 0E SO (shift out) 116 78 4E N
017 15 0F SI (shift in) 117 79 4F O
020 16 10 DLE (data link escape) 120 80 50 P
021 17 11 DC1 (device control 1) 121 81 51 Q
022 18 12 DC2 (device control 2) 122 82 52 R
023 19 13 DC3 (device control 3) 123 83 53 S
024 20 14 DC4 (device control 4) 124 84 54 T
025 21 15 NAK (negative ack.) 125 85 55 U
026 22 16 SYN (synchronous idle) 126 86 56 V
027 23 17 ETB (end of trans. blk) 127 87 57 W
030 24 18 CAN (cancel) 130 88 58 X
031 25 19 EM (end of medium) 131 89 59 Y
032 26 1A SUB (substitute) 132 90 5A Z
033 27 1B ESC (escape) 133 91 5B [
034 28 1C FS (file separator) 134 92 5C \ '\\'
035 29 1D GS (group separator) 135 93 5D ]
036 30 1E RS (record separator) 136 94 5E ^
037 31 1F US (unit separator) 137 95 5F _
So, for example, GS would be Ctrl+], and FS should be Ctrl+\.
However there is a catch. Ctrl+\, and a few others, will be intercepted by the terminal.
There is however a much better way. You can send all of the commands by using the shell builtin echo -e
with the string \x??
where ??
is the correct hex code (to the left of the control code name in the table above). This backslash will also need to be escaped from the shell.
You can also avoid sending a newline by using echo -ne
.
So again for FS, to send the command "FS p (print NV bit image)" you could type:
# FS p
echo -ne \\x1cp > /dev/lp0
or escaping with quotes instead of another backslash:
echo -ne '\x1cp' > /dev/lp0