TADS Special Characters

The TADS Host Environment for the T3 VM, when displaying character strings, interprets certain characters as special control sequences. When one of these characters is encountered in an output stream, the TADS Host Environment does not render the character directly, but instead modifies the way subsequent characters are displayed.

The special characters are listed below. Compilers are free to choose their own source-code representations for these characters, but are encouraged to use the encodings shown in the table to ensure source-level compatibility with other compilers.

Note that the special characters below are special only to the TADS Host Environment. The T3 VM itself attaches no special meanings to any of these.

Source	Encoding	Meaning
\n	0x000A	New Line. Start a new line; has no effect at the start of a line (hence multiple New Line characters have the same effect as a single Newline character).
\b	0x000B	Blank Line. If at the start of a new line, skip one line. If not at the start of a new line, end the line, then skip another line.
\t	0x0009	Tab. Skip ahead to the next tab stop. Character-mode renderers add an appropriate number of spaces to reach the next tab stop; graphical renderers add whitespace to the next tab stop.
\^	0x000F	Caps. Convert the next single character displayed to upper-case. Overrides an Uncaps sequence.
\v	0x000E	Uncaps. Convert the next single character displayed to lower-case. Overrides a Caps sequence.
\ (backslash-space)	0x0015	Non-breaking Space. Render a space, but do not allow a line break at this character.