Control characters are characters that do not representable a printable character but instead serves to initiate a specific action.
There are various types of control characters, including printing control characters, data structuring control characters, and transmission control characters—many of which are often used in the prefix or suffix configurations of barcode and RFID scanners. Some applications, such as SerialMagic Gears allow you to append a control character to scan data at the software level.
The table below provides information regarding some of the more common ASCII control characters.
Control Character | Name | Explanation |
---|---|---|
SOH | Start of Heading | Signifies that start of a heading block in a transmission |
STX | Start of Text | Signifies the end of a heading block and precedes a text block |
ETX | End of Text | Terminates a text |
EOT | End of Transmission | Indicates the conclusion of the transmission of one or more text blocks (terminates a transmission) |
LF | Line Feed | A format effector which advances the active position (the cursor position) to the same character position of the next line |
CR | Carriage Return | A format effector which moves the active position to the first character position on the same line |