forums & irc coding
 

While surfing on forums, sometimes I notice messages that are incoded in digitals, such as :&#some_number; and lots of them....
And ever symbol has some meanning...
I think it is hard to understand me but anyway try.
I see such sort of messages usually, but cannot understand them. Maybe someone know what the heck it is? Is it some sort of ASCII coding?

I would guess that this is just someone embedding ANSI stuff in there messages.