ASCII control characters

ASCII control characters are special characters in the ASCII character set that are used to control the behavior of devices, such as printers or terminals, rather than to represent displayable characters. They are represented by code values 0 through 31 and 127 in the ASCII character set.

Examples of ASCII control characters include:

• Carriage return (CR, code value 13)


• Line feed (LF, code value 10)


• Tab (code value 9)


• Backspace (code value 8)


• Form feed (FF, code value 12)

These characters are typically used to format text, such as to move the cursor to the beginning of a new line, or to erase the previous character. ASCII control characters are also used in communications protocols, such as the Telnet protocol, to control the behavior of network devices and to transmit data between devices.

In modern computer systems, the use of ASCII control characters has largely been replaced by more advanced control codes and protocols, but they are still used in certain legacy applications and systems that use ASCII-based protocols.