ANSI X3.64 (ISO/IEC 6429)

Output of the system-monitorhtop, an ncurses-application (which usesSGR and other ANSI/ISO control sequences).
Standard	ECMA-48 ISO/IEC 6429 FIPS 86 ANSI X3.64 JIS X 0211
Classification	ISO/IEC 2022 basedcontrol code and control sequence set
Other related encodings	ITU T.61 ISO/IEC 8613-6 / ITU T.416 Other control function standards: ITU T.101 JIS X 0207 ISO 6630 DIN 31626 ETS 300 706

ANSI escape sequences are a standard forin-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on videotext terminals andterminal emulators. Certain sequences ofbytes, most starting with anASCII escape character and abracket character, are embedded into text. The terminal interprets these sequences as commands, rather than text to display verbatim.

ANSI sequences were introduced in the 1970s to replace vendor-specific sequences and became widespread in the computer equipment market by the early 1980s. Although hardware text terminals have become increasingly rare in the 21st century, the relevance of the ANSI standard persists because a great majority of terminal emulators and command consoles interpret at least a portion of the ANSI standard.

Almost all manufacturers of video terminals added vendor-specific escape sequences to perform operations such as placing the cursor at arbitrary positions on the screen. One example is theVT52 terminal, which allowed the cursor to be placed at an x,y location on the screen by sending theESC character, aY character, and then two characters representing numerical values equal to the x,y location plus 32 (thus starting at the ASCII space character and avoiding the control characters). TheHazeltine 1500 had a similar feature, invoked using~,DC1 and then the X and Y positions separated with a comma. While the two terminals had identical functionality in this regard, different control sequences had to be used to invoke them.

As these sequences were different for different terminals, elaborate libraries such astermcap ("terminal capabilities") and utilities such astput had to be created so programs could use the sameAPI to work with any terminal. In addition, many of these terminals required sending numbers (such as row and column) as the binary values of the characters; for some programming languages, and for systems that did not use ASCII internally, it was often difficult to turn a number into the correct character.

The ANSI standard attempted to address these problems by making a command set that all terminals would use and requiring all numeric information to be transmitted as ASCII numbers. The first standard in the series wasECMA-48, adopted in 1976.^[1] It was a continuation of a series of character coding standards, the first one beingECMA-6 from 1965, a 7-bit standard from whichISO 646 originates. The name "ANSI escape sequence" dates from 1979 whenANSI adopted ANSI X3.64. The ANSI X3L2 committee collaborated with theECMA committee TC 1 to produce nearly identical standards. These two standards were merged into an international standard, ISO 6429.^[1] In 1994, ANSI withdrew its standard in favor of the international standard.

The first popular video terminal to support these sequences was theDigitalVT100, introduced in 1978.^[2] This model was very successful in the market, which sparked a variety of VT100 clones, among the earliest and most popular of which was the much more affordableZenith Z-19 in 1979.^[3] Others included theQume QVT-108,Televideo TVI-970,Wyse WY-99GT as well as optional "VT100" or "VT103" or "ANSI" modes with varying degrees of compatibility on many other brands. The popularity of these gradually led to more and more software (especiallybulletin board systems and otheronline services) assuming the escape sequences worked, leading to almost all new terminals and emulator programs supporting them.

In 1981, ANSI X3.64 was adopted for use in the US government byFIPS publication 86. Later, the US government stopped duplicating industry standards, so FIPS pub. 86 was withdrawn.^[4]

ECMA-48 has been updated several times and is currently at its 5th edition, from 1991.^[5] It is also adopted byISO andIEC as standardISO/IEC 6429.^[6] A version is adopted as aJapanese Industrial Standard, asJIS X 0211.

Related standards includeITU T.61, theTeletex standard, and theISO/IEC 8613, theOpen Document Architecture standard (mainly ISO/IEC 8613-6 or ITU T.416). The two systems share many escape codes with the ANSI system, with extensions that are not necessarily meaningful to computer terminals. Both systems quickly fell into disuse, but ECMA-48 does mark the extensions used in them as reserved.

In the early 1980s, large amounts of software directly used these sequences to update screen displays. This included everything onVMS (which assumed DEC terminals), most software designed to be portable onCP/M home computers, and even lots of Unix software as it was easier to use than the termcap libraries, such as the shell script examples below in this article.

Terminal emulators for communicating with remote machines almost always implement ANSI escape codes. This includes anything written to communicate with bulletin-board systems on home and personal computers. On Unix terminal emulators such asxterm also can communicate with software running on the same machine, and thus software running in X11 under a terminal emulator could assume the ability to write these sequences.

As computers got more powerful even built-in displays started supporting them, allowing software to be portable between CP/M systems. There were attempts to extend the escape sequences to support printers^[7] and as an early PDF-like document storage format, theOpen Document Architecture.^{[citation needed]}

The IBM PC, introduced in 1981, did not support these or any other escape sequences for updating the screen. Only a fewcontrol characters (BEL,CR,LF,BS) were interpreted by the underlying BIOS. Any display effects had to be done with BIOS calls, which were notoriously slow, or by directly manipulating the IBM PC hardware. This made any interesting software non-portable and led to the need to duplicate details of the display hardware inPC Clones.

DOS version 2.0 included an optionaldevice driver namedANSI.SYS. Poor performance, and the fact that it was not installed by default, meant software rarely (if ever) took advantage of it.

TheWindows Console did not support ANSI escape sequences, nor did Microsoft provide any method to enable them. Some replacements such as JP Software'sTCC (formerly 4NT), Michael J. Mefford's ANSI.COM, Jason Hood'sANSICON^[8] and Maximus5'sConEmu enabled ANSI escape sequences. Software such as the Python colorama package^[9] orCygwin modified text in-process as it was sent to the console, extracting the ANSI Escape sequences and emulating them with Windows calls.

In 2016, Microsoft released theWindows 10version 1511 update which unexpectedly implemented support for ANSI escape sequences, over three decades after the debut of Windows.^[10] This was done alongsideWindows Subsystem for Linux, apparently to allowUnix-like terminal-based software to use the Windows Console. Windows PowerShell 5.1 enabled this by default, and PowerShell 6 made it possible to embed the necessary ESC character into a string with`e.^[11]

Windows Terminal, introduced in 2019, supports the sequences by default.^[12] Since Windows 11 22H2 and Windows Terminal 1.15, Windows Terminal replaces Windows Console as the default.^[13][14]

Almost all users assume some functions of some single-byte characters. Initially defined as part of ASCII, the default C0 control code set is now defined in ISO 6429 (ECMA-48), making it part of the same standard as the C1 set invoked by the ANSI escape sequences (althoughISO 2022 allows the ISO 6429 C0 set to be used without the ISO 6429 C1 set, andvice versa, provided that 0x1B is always ESC). This is used to shorten the amount of data transmitted, or to perform some functions that are unavailable from escape sequences:

Escape sequences vary in length. The general format for an ANSI-compliant escape sequence is defined byANSI X3.41 (equivalent to ECMA-35 or ISO/IEC 2022).^[15]: 13.1 The escape sequences consist only of bytes in the range0x20—0x7F (all the non-control ASCII characters), and can be parsed without looking ahead. The behavior when a control character, a byte with the high bit set, or a byte that is not part of any valid sequence, is encountered before the end is undefined.

If theESC is followed by a byte in the range 0x40 to 0x5F, the escape sequence is of typeFe. Its interpretation is delegated to the applicableC1 control code standard.^{[15]: 13.2.1} Accordingly, all escape sequences corresponding to C1 control codes from ANSI X3.64 / ECMA-48 follow this format.^{[16]: 5.3.a}

The standard says that, in 8-bit environments, the control functions corresponding to typeFe escape sequences (those from the set ofC1 control codes) can be represented as single bytes in the 0x80–0x9F range.^{[16]: 5.3.b} This is possible in character encodings conforming to the provisions for an 8-bit code made in ISO 2022, such as theISO 8859 series. However, in character encodings used on modern devices such asUTF-8 orCP-1252, those codes are often used for other purposes, so only the 2-byte sequence is typically used. In the case of UTF-8, representing a C1 control code via theC1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement block results in a different two-byte code (e.g.0xC2,0x8E forU+008E), but no space is saved this way.

For Control Sequence Introducer, or CSI, commands, theESC [ (written as\e[,\x1b[ or\033[ in several programming languages) is followed by any number (including none) of "parameter bytes" in the range 0x30–0x3F (ASCII0–9:;<=>?), then by any number of "intermediate bytes" in the range 0x20–0x2F (ASCII space and!"#$%&'()*+,-./), then finally by a single "final byte" in the range 0x40–0x7E (ASCII@A–Z[\]^_`a–z{|}~).^[16]: 5.4

All common sequences just use the parameters as a series of semicolon-separated numbers such as1;2;3.^{[16]: 5.4.2} Missing numbers are treated as0 (1;;3 acts like the middle number is0, and no parameters at all inESC[m acts like a0 reset code). Some sequences (such as CUU) treat0 as1 in order to make missing parameters useful.^{[16]: F.4.2}

A subset of arrangements was declared "private" so that terminal manufacturers could insert their own sequences without conflicting with the standard. Sequences containing the parameter bytes<=>? or the final bytes 0x70–0x7E (p–z{|}~) are private.

The behavior of the terminal is undefined in the case where a CSI sequence contains any character outside of the range 0x20–0x7E. These illegal characters are either C0 control characters (the range 0–0x1F), DEL (0x7F), or bytes with the high bit set. Possible responses are to ignore the byte, to process it immediately, and furthermore whether to continue with the CSI sequence, to abort it immediately, or to ignore the rest of it.^{[citation needed]}

The control sequenceCSIn m, named Select Graphic Rendition (SGR), sets display attributes. Several attributes can be set in the same sequence, separated by semicolons.^[25] Each display attribute remains in effect until a following occurrence of SGR resets it.^[16] If no codes are given,CSI m is treated asCSI 0 m (reset / normal).

The original specification only had 8 colors, and just gave them names. The SGR parameters 30–37 selected the foreground color, while 40–47 selected the background. Quite a few terminals implemented "bold" (SGR code 1) as a brighter color rather than a different font, thus providing 8 additional foreground colors. Usually you could not get these as background colors, though sometimes inverse video (SGR code 7) would allow that. Examples: to get black letters on white background useESC[30;47m, to get red useESC[31m, to get bright red useESC[1;31m. To reset colors to their defaults, useESC[39;49m (not supported on some terminals), or reset all attributes withESC[0m. Later terminals added the ability to directly specify the "bright" colors with 90–97 and 100–107.

The chart below shows a few examples of how classical standards and modernterminal emulators translate the 4-bit color codes into 24-bit color codes.

As256-color lookup tables became common on graphic cards, escape sequences were added to select from a pre-defined set of 256 colors:^[37]

ESC[38;5;⟨n⟩m Select foreground color      where n is a number from the table belowESC[48;5;⟨n⟩m Select background color  0-  7:  standard colors (as in ESC [ 30–37 m)  8- 15:  high intensity colors (as in ESC [ 90–97 m) 16-231:  6 × 6 × 6 cube (216 colors): 16 + 36 × r + 6 × g + b (0 ≤ r, g, b ≤ 5)232-255:  grayscale from dark to light in 24 steps

The colors displayed by these values vary across terminal/emulator implementations as the recognized ECMA-48 and ITU's T.416 specifications do not define a specific color palette for this lookup table. While it is common to use the above formula for the color palette, in particular the algorithm and choice of colors for the 16-231 cube values differs between implementations. The color palette and algorithm used by XTerm is specified below as a sample.^[16][38]

TheITU's T.416 Information technology - Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures^[38] uses ":" as separator characters instead:

ESC[38:5:⟨n⟩m Select foreground color      where n is a number from the table belowESC[48:5:⟨n⟩m Select background color

To calculate the RGB values of the colors in the table above, the followingPython script can be used:

# print a list of the 256-color red/green/blue values used by xterm.## reference:# https://github.com/ThomasDickey/ncurses-snapshots/blob/master/test/xterm-16color.dat# https://github.com/ThomasDickey/xterm-snapshots/blob/master/XTerm-col.ad# https://github.com/ThomasDickey/xterm-snapshots/blob/master/256colres.plprint("colors 0-15 correspond to the ANSI and aixterm naming")forcodeinrange(0,16):ifcode>8:level=255elifcode==7:level=229else:level=205r=127ifcode==8elselevelif(code&1)!=0else92ifcode==12else0g=127ifcode==8elselevelif(code&2)!=0else92ifcode==12else0b=127ifcode==8else238ifcode==4elselevelif(code&4)!=0else0print(f"{code:3d}:{r:02X}{g:02X}{b:02X}")print("colors 16-231 are a 6x6x6 color cube")forredinrange(0,6):forgreeninrange(0,6):forblueinrange(0,6):code=16+(red*36)+(green*6)+bluer=red*40+55ifred!=0else0g=green*40+55ifgreen!=0else0b=blue*40+55ifblue!=0else0print(f"{code:3d}:{r:02X}{g:02X}{b:02X}")print("colors 232-255 are a grayscale ramp, intentionally leaving out black and white")code=232forgrayinrange(0,24):level=gray*10+8code=232+grayprint(f"{code:3d}:{level:02X}{level:02X}{level:02X}")

There has also been a similar but incompatible 88-color encoding using the same escape sequence, seen inrxvt andxterm-88color.^[39] It uses a 4×4×4 color cube.

As "true color" graphic cards with 16 to 24 bits of color became common, applications began to support 24-bit colors. Terminal emulators supporting setting 24-bit foreground and background colors with escape sequences include Xterm,^[17] KDE'sKonsole,^[40][41] and iTerm, as well as all libvte based terminals,^[42] includingGNOME Terminal.^[43]

ESC[38;2;⟨r⟩;⟨g⟩;⟨b⟩m Select RGB foreground colorESC[48;2;⟨r⟩;⟨g⟩;⟨b⟩m Select RGB background color

This syntax, initially implemented in XTerm, is based on a reading of theISO/IEC 8613-6 specification, specifically that SGR 38 / SGR 48 followed by the parameter "2" can specify a "direct color" in RGB space.^[44]. As the first widely-used implementation, this specification of RGB values using semicolon separators is widely supported by terminal emulators that include 24-bit color support.^{[dubious –discuss]}

As with the8-bit color codes, there is a very similar specification of 24-bit color in theITU's T.416Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures,^[38] which was adopted as ISO/IEC 8613-6 but ended up as a commercial failure.^{[citation needed]} The ODA version is more elaborate and thus incompatible with the above semicolon-separated version:

• Colons are used as separators, rather than semicolons.
• The parameters after the '2' (r, g, and b) are optional and can be left empty.
• There is a leading "colorspace ID".^[17] The definition of the colorspace ID is not included in that specification, so it may be blank to represent the unspecified default. For CMYK color specifications, mintty interprets the colorspace ID parameter as specifying the maximum value which the channel values are given out of (e.g. 100 or 255).^[33]
• In addition to the '2' value after 48 to specify a Red-Green-Blue format (and the '5' above for a 0-255 indexed color), there are alternatives of '0' for implementation-defined and '1' for transparent - neither of which have any further parameters; '3' specifies colors using a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow scheme, and '4' for a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black one, the latter using the position marked as "unused" for the Black component.^[38]

ESC[38:2:⟨Color-Space-ID⟩:⟨r⟩:⟨g⟩:⟨b⟩:⟨unused⟩:⟨CS tolerance⟩:⟨Color-Space⟩m Select RGB foreground colorESC[48:2:⟨Color-Space-ID⟩:⟨r⟩:⟨g⟩:⟨b⟩:⟨unused⟩:⟨CS tolerance⟩:⟨Color-Space⟩m Select RGB background color

whereColor-Space indicates the Color-Space associated with the given tolerance:0 for CIELUV or1 for CIELAB.

The semicolon-based RGB specification is the most widely supported, but both it and the RGB variant of ITU T.416 are supported by many terminal emulators.^[45][46]

Rather than using the color support in termcap and terminfo introduced in SVr3.2 (1987),^[47] the S-Lang library (version 0.99-32, June 1996) used a separate environment variable$COLORTERM to indicate whether a terminal emulator could use colors at all, and later added values to indicate if it supported 24-bit color.^[48][49] This system, although poorly documented, became widespread enough for Fedora and RHEL to consider using it as a simpler and more universal detection mechanism compared to querying the now-updated libraries.^[50]

Some terminal emulators (urxvt, Konsole) set$COLORFGBG to report the color scheme of the terminal (mainly light vs. dark background). This behavior originated in S-Lang^[49] and is used by vim. Gnome-terminal refuses to add this behavior, as the syntax for the value is not agreed upon, the value cannot be changed upon a runtime change of the palette, and more "proper" xterm OSC 4/10/11 sequences already exist.^[51]

Most Operating System Command sequences were defined by Xterm, but many are also supported by other terminal emulators. For historical reasons, Xterm can end the command withBEL (0x07) as well as the standardST (0x9C or 0x1B 0x5C).^[17] For example, Xterm allows the window title to be set byESC ]0;this is the window title BEL.

A non-xterm extension is the hyperlink,ESC ]8;;link ST from 2017, used by VTE,^{[52][discuss]} iTerm2,^[52] and mintty,^[53] among others.^[54]

The Linux console usesESC ] P n rr gg bb to change the palette, which, if hard-coded into an application, may hang other terminals.^[55] However, appendingST will be ignored by Linux and form a proper, ignorable sequence for other terminals.^{[citation needed]}

If theESC is followed by a byte in the range0x60—0x7E, the escape sequence is of typeFs. This type is used for control functions individually registered with theISO-IR registry.^[56] A table of these is listed underISO/IEC 2022.

If theESC is followed by a byte in the range0x30—0x3F, the escape sequence is of typeFp, which is set apart for up to sixteen private-use control functions.^{[15]: 6.5.3}

If theESC is followed by a byte in the range0x20—0x2F, the escape sequence is of typenF. Said byte is followed by any number of additional bytes in this range, and then a byte in the range0x30-0x7E. These escape sequences are further subcategorised by the low two bits of the first byte, e.g. "type2F" for sequences where the first byte is0x22; and by whether the final byte is in the range0x30—0x3F indicating private use (e.g. "type2Fp") or not (e.g. "type2Ft").^{[15]: 13.2.1}

Most of thenFt sequences are for changing the current character set, and are listed inISO/IEC 2022. Some others:

If the first byte is '#' the public sequences are reserved for additional ISO-IR registered individual control functions.^{[15]: 6.5.2} No such sequences are presently registered.^[56] Type3Fp sequences (which includes ones starting with '#') are available for private-use control functions.^{[15]: 6.5.3}

CSI 2 J — This clears the screen and, on some devices, locates the cursor to the y,x position 1,1 (upper left corner).

CSI 32 m — This makes text green. The green may be a dark, dull green, so you may wish to enable Bold with the sequenceCSI 1 m which would make it bright green, or combined asCSI 32 ; 1 m. Some implementations use the Bold state to make the character Bright.

CSI 0 ; 6 8 ; "DIR" ; 13 p — This reassigns the key F10 to send to the keyboard buffer the string "DIR" and ENTER, which in the DOS command line would display the contents of the current directory. (MS-DOS ANSI.SYS only) This was sometimes used forANSI bombs. This is a private-use code (as indicated by the letter p), using a non-standard extension to include a string-valued parameter. Following the letter of the standard would consider the sequence to end at the letter D.

CSI s — This saves the cursor position. Using the sequenceCSI u will restore it to the position. Say the current cursor position is 7(y) and 10(x). The sequenceCSI s will save those two numbers. Now you can move to a different cursor position, such as 20(y) and 3(x), using the sequenceCSI 20 ; 3 H orCSI 20 ; 3 f. Now if you use the sequence CSI u the cursor position will return to 7(y) and 10(x). Some terminals require the DEC sequencesESC 7 /ESC 8 instead which is more widely supported.

ANSI escape codes are often used inUNIX and UNIX-liketerminals to providesyntax highlighting. For example, on compatible terminals, the followinglist command color-codes file and directory names by type.

ls --color

Users can employ escape codes in their scripts by including them as part ofstandard output orstandard error. For example, the following GNUsed command embellishes the output of themake command by displaying lines containing words starting with "WARN" inreverse video and words starting with "ERR" in bright yellow on a dark red background (letter case is ignored). The representations of the codes are highlighted.^[61]

make 2>&1 | sed -e 's/.*\bWARN.*/\x1b[7m&\x1b[0m/i' -e 's/.*\bERR.*/\x1b[93;41m&\x1b[0m/i'

The followingBash function flashes the terminal (by alternately sending reverse and normal video mode codes) until the user presses a key.^[62]It can be used to alert a programmer when a lengthy command terminates, such as withmake ; flasher .^[63]

flasher(){whiletrue;doprintf'\e[?5h';sleep0.1;printf'\e[?5l';read-s-n1-t1&&break;done;}

The following command will reset the console, similar to the commandreset on modern Linux systems; however it should work even on older Linux systems and on other (non-Linux) UNIX variants.

printf'\033c'

This following program creates a table of numbers from 0 to 109, each of which is displayed in the format specified by theSelect Graphic Rendition escape sequence using that number as the graphic rendition code.

#include<stdio.h>intmain(void){introw,col,n;for(row=0;row<11;row++){for(col=0;col<10;col++){n=10*row+col;if(n>109)break;printf("\033[%dm %3d\033[m",n,n);}printf("\n");}return0;}

This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "ANSI escape code" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Pressing special keys on the keyboard, as well as outputting many xterm CSI, DCS, or OSC sequences, often produces a CSI, DCS, or OSC sequence, sent from the terminal to the computer as though the user typed it.

When typing input on a terminal keypresses outside the normal main alphanumeric keyboard area can be sent to the host as ANSI sequences. For keys that have an equivalent output function, such as the cursor keys, these often mirror the output sequences. However, for most keypresses there isn't an equivalent output sequence to use.

There are several encoding schemes, and unfortunately most terminals mix sequences from different schemes, so host software has to be able to deal with input sequences using any scheme. To complicate the matter, the VT terminals themselves have two schemes of input,normal mode andapplication mode that can be switched by the application.

(draft section)

<char>                                         -> char<esc>                                          -> esc<esc> <esc>                                    -> Alt-esc<esc> <char>                                   -> Alt-keypress or keycode sequence<esc> '['                                      -> Alt-[<esc> '[' (<modifier>) <char>                  -> keycode sequence, <modifier> is a decimal                                                  number and defaults to 1 (xterm)<esc> '[' (<keycode>) (';'<modifier>) '~'      -> keycode sequence, <keycode> and <modifier>                                                  are decimal numbers and default to 1 (vt)

If the terminating character is '~', the first number must be present and is akeycode number, the second number is an optional modifier value. If the terminatingcharacter is a letter, the letter is the keycode value, and the optional number isthe modifier value.

The modifier value defaults to 1, and after subtracting 1 is a bitmap of modifierkeys being pressed:Meta+Ctrl+Alt+⇧ Shift. So, for example,<esc>[4;2~ is⇧ Shift+End,<esc>[20~ is function keyF9,<esc>[5C isCtrl+→.

In other words, the modifier is the sum of the following numbers:

vt sequences:<esc>[1~    - Home        <esc>[16~   -             <esc>[31~   - F17<esc>[2~    - Insert      <esc>[17~   - F6          <esc>[32~   - F18<esc>[3~    - Delete      <esc>[18~   - F7          <esc>[33~   - F19<esc>[4~    - End         <esc>[19~   - F8          <esc>[34~   - F20<esc>[5~    - PgUp        <esc>[20~   - F9          <esc>[35~   - <esc>[6~    - PgDn        <esc>[21~   - F10         <esc>[7~    - Home        <esc>[22~   -             <esc>[8~    - End         <esc>[23~   - F11         <esc>[9~    -             <esc>[24~   - F12         <esc>[10~   - F0          <esc>[25~   - F13         <esc>[11~   - F1          <esc>[26~   - F14         <esc>[12~   - F2          <esc>[27~   -             <esc>[13~   - F3          <esc>[28~   - F15         <esc>[14~   - F4          <esc>[29~   - F16         <esc>[15~   - F5          <esc>[30~   -xterm sequences:<esc>[A     - Up          <esc>[K     -             <esc>[U     -<esc>[B     - Down        <esc>[L     -             <esc>[V     -<esc>[C     - Right       <esc>[M     -             <esc>[W     -<esc>[D     - Left        <esc>[N     -             <esc>[X     -<esc>[E     -             <esc>[O     -             <esc>[Y     -<esc>[F     - End         <esc>[1P    - F1          <esc>[Z     -<esc>[G     - Keypad 5    <esc>[1Q    - F2       <esc>[H     - Home        <esc>[1R    - F3       <esc>[I     -             <esc>[1S    - F4       <esc>[J     -             <esc>[T     -

<esc>[A to<esc>[D are the same as the ANSI output sequences. The<modifier> is normally omitted if no modifier keys are pressed, but most implementations always emit the<modifier> forF1–F4. (draft section)

Xterm has a comprehensive documentation page on the various function-key and mouse input sequence schemes from DEC's VT terminals and various other terminals it emulates.^[17] Thomas Dickey has added a lot of support to it over time;^[64] he also maintains a list of default keys used by other terminal emulators for comparison.^[65]

• On the Linux console, certain function keys generate sequences of the formCSI [char. The CSI sequence should terminate on the[.
• Old versions ofTerminator generateSS3 1;modifierschar whenF1 – F4 are pressed with modifiers. The faulty behavior was copied fromGNOME Terminal.^{[citation needed]}
• xterm repliesCSIrow ;column R if asked for cursor position andCSI 1 ;modifiers R if theF3 key is pressed with modifiers, which collide in the case ofrow == 1. This can be avoided by using the? private modifier asCSI ? 6 n, which will be reflected in the response asCSI ?row ;column R.
• many terminals prependESC to any character that is typed with the alt key down. This creates ambiguity for uppercase letters and symbols@[\]^_, which would form C1 codes.^{[clarification needed]}
• Konsole generatesSS3modifierschar whenF1 – F4 are pressed with modifiers.^{[clarification needed]}
• iTerm2 supports reporting additional keys via an enhanced CSI u mode.^[66]

• ANSI art
• Control character
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
• C0 and C1 control codes

• Standard ECMA-48, Control Functions For Coded Character Sets. (5th edition, June 1991), European Computer Manufacturers Association, Geneva 1991 (also published by ISO and IEC as standard ISO/IEC 6429)
• vt100.net DEC Documents
• "ANSI.SYS -- ansi terminal emulation escape sequences". Archived fromthe original on 6 February 2006. Retrieved22 February 2007.
• Xterm / Escape Sequences
• AIXterm / Escape Sequences
• A collection of escape sequences for terminals that are vaguely compliant with ECMA-48 and friends.
• "ANSI Escape Sequences". Archived fromthe original on 25 May 2011.
• ITU-T Rec. T.416 (03/93) Information technology – Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures

• Computer standards
• Ecma standards
• American National Standards Institute standards
• ISO standards
• Text user interface

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