Embed ASCII Characters in text file

[Bill Fisher]

Was curious if anyone could give me the proper way to embed an ESC in a text file. What I need is to send an ESC followed by the following text. TEST1ON. this will be sent out the serial port.

Thanks for looking

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

1- command way
echo "\033"TEST01


2-
file way
vi TEST_FILE
i
^V[esc key]TEST01
[ESC key]:w!

cat TEST_FILE

[Chris Vail]

This one is easy: "echo \033>>$FILE". This puts the octal equivalent of the escape character (decimal 027) in your text file.


Chris

[Bill Fisher]

Thanks for the quick responses. I should have been more explicit in my question. This is part of a configuration file for the serial ports and the ESC will need to be a part of the config file. A small example follows.

NUMBER OF TERMINALS: 2
TERMINAL NAME: TTY A
TERMINAL DEVICE: /dev/tty0p0
TERMINAL iflag: ICRNL |IXOFF |IXON
(all the rest of the TERMINAL settings)
Open relay string: ESCTEST1OFF
Close relay string: ESCTEST1ON
(relay 2 - 8 the same)
The text after the colon gets sent out the appropriate serial port. I can edit the file using vi or any editor.

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

If i've understood rigth, you wish chage ESC by esc char in the file, so try the second way.

type CNTRL-V and then type ESC key. You will see a ^[ in your screen that is teh esc (0x1b , 033 octal) char

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Using vi:

Position the cursor at the desired insertion point:

Press "i" to enter Insertion Mode.
Enter "Cntrl-V" - the next character will be quoted without any interpretation. You should see a "^" to indicate that the next character is to be escaped.
Press ESCAPE (or any other desired control char)
Press ESCAPE again to end the insert.
:w to save the file
:q to exit vi.

You can check you work (if you don't trust the vi display) using od -c myfile.