values of bytes in regular files?

newbie_mel · 04-22-2006, 02:27 AM

Hey.
I am unsure of the wording of this question.
Could someone reword it so I could understand it better?
what values can the bytes within each regular file have?
(i reworded it to make more sense, but i know there are different types of regular files, eg. text files, binary files.)... but i am unsure of the "bytes" thing.

AnanthaP · 04-22-2006, 02:39 AM

In hex : 20 to 7F and "\n".

In numeric : 32 to 127 and "\n".

By regular file I expect that you mean POTF (plain old text files) with readable charactes.

End

newbie_mel · 04-22-2006, 02:41 AM

I am new to Linux,
what exactly does:
In numeric : 32 to 127 and "\n"
mean?

(sorry i am very very new)

pixellany · 04-22-2006, 08:25 AM

The question is still a bit unclear.

A byte is 8 bits, and can therefore have any value between 0 and 255 decimal (2^8-1)

In a text file, the byte values are assigned to characters. Here is a link to a table: http://www.lookuptables.com/

Note that some ascii values are control characters--ie they trigger some action on a terminal--as opposed to causing text to be printed.

tamoneya · 04-22-2006, 07:05 PM

/n was an example of an escape character. It means new line. so if i were to tell a program to print "hello /n world" it would look like this:

Code:

hello
world

other characters include // and /t