Escape Character
CMD.EXE recognizes a user-definable escape character. This character
gives the following character a special meaning; it is not the same as the
ASCII ESC that is often used in ANSI and printer control sequences.
The default escape character is a caret [^].
If you don't like using the default escape character, you can pick another
character using the SETDOS /E command, the Options 1 page of the OPTION
dialogs, or the EscapeChar directive in your .INI file. If you plan to
share aliases or batch files between CMD.EXE and 4DOS, 4NT, or Take
Command, see Special Character Compatibility for details about choosing
compatible escape characters for two or more products.
Ten special characters are recognized when they are preceded by the escape
character. The combination of the escape character and one of these
characters is translated to a single character, as shown below. These are
primarily useful for redirecting codes to the printer; ^e is also useful
to generate ANSI "escape sequences" in your PROMPT, ECHO, or other output
commands. The special characters which can follow the escape character
are:
b backspace
c comma
e the ASCII ESC character (ASCII 27)
f form feed
k back quote
n line feed
q double quote
r carriage return
s space
t tab character
If you follow the escape character with any other character, the escape
character is removed and the second character is copied directly to the
command line. This allows you to suppress the normal meaning of special
characters (such as ? * / \ | " ` > < and &). For example, to display a
message containing a > symbol, which normally indicates redirection:
[c:\] echo 2 is ^> 4
To send a form feed followed by the sequence ESC Y to the printer, you
can use this command:
[c:\] echos ^f^eY > prn
The escape character has an additional use when it is the last character
on any line of a .BAT or BTM batch file. CMD.EXE recognizes this use of
the escape character to signal line continuation: the command processor
removes the escape character and appends the next line to the current
line before executing it.
Created using Inf-PHP v.2 (c) 2003 Yuri Prokushev
Created using Inf-HTML v.0.9b (c) 1995 Peter Childs