ASCII Character ␇

The Bell character (␇), also known as Alert, is a control character in the ASCII and Unicode character sets with the value of 7. It is often abbreviated as BEL. The Bell character was originally used to trigger an audible signal or a visible alert on the terminal. In many early computer systems, this would actually trigger a physical bell or buzzer in the terminal hardware.

• In ASCII and Unicode, the BEL character is defined as U+0007.
• In the context of modern graphical user interfaces, the BEL character can sometimes trigger a system alert or notification sound, depending on the specific system and the user's settings.
• Like other ASCII control characters, BEL does not represent a printable glyph and is typically non-visible in text content.
• In some programming environments and scripting languages, the BEL character can be represented in string literals using escape sequences, such as '\a' in C and C++.
• While not as commonly used in modern computing environments due to the evolution of more sophisticated notification mechanisms, the BEL character may still be encountered in certain contexts or legacy systems.