class::Char
summary::ASCII character
related::Classes/String
categories:: Core

description::
An ASCII character represented as a signed 8-bit integer (-128 to 127).
Valid ASCII values are in the range 0-127.
Chars may be written as literals using the $ sign. For example: $a, $b, $c.
Some special characters can be expressed as literals using escape sequences (for example, code::$\n:: for newline).
See link::Reference/Literals#Characters:: for more information.

Chars may be created from link::Classes/Integer##Integers:: using the methods link::Classes/Integer#-asAscii:: and link::Classes/Integer#-asDigit::.

Note that, while Char does not support encodings aside from ASCII—such as
multi-byte encodings like UTF-8 and UTF-16, or the full Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1)
character set—Chars with negative values are perfectly legal, and may be strung
together in strings that use these encodings.

The SuperCollider IDE uses UTF-8 to decode and display strings.
See link::Classes/String:: for more information.

classmethods::

method::nl
Newline code::($\n)::.

method::ret
Carriage return code::($\r)::.

method::tab
Horizontal tab code::($\t)::.

method::ff
Form feed code::($\f)::.

method::vtab
Vertical tab code::($\v)::.

method::space
Single space code::($ )::.

method::comma
Comma code::($,)::.

method::bullet
Asterisk code::($*)::.

instancemethods::
private:: archiveAsCompileString

subsection::conversion

method::ascii

returns:: the integer ASCII value of a Char.

method::digit

returns:: an integer value from 0 to 9 for chars $0 to $9, and values 10 to 35 for chars $a to $z
or $A to $Z.

method::toUpper

returns:: the upper case version of a char. Nonalphabetic chars return themselves.

method::toLower

returns:: a lower case version of a char. Nonalphabetic chars return themselves.

subsection:: Testing

method::isAlpha

returns:: whether the char is an alphabetic character.

method::isAlphaNum

returns:: whether the char is an alphabetic or numeric character.

method::isPrint

returns:: whether the char is printable.

method::isPunct

returns:: whether the char is a punctuation character.

method::isSpace

returns:: true if the char is white space: any of code::[$ , $\f, $\n, $\r, $\t, $\v]::.

method::isDecDigit

returns:: true if the char is a decimal digit $0 to $9.

method::isFileSafe

returns:: true if the char is safe for use in a filename.
Excludes the path separators / and :
discussion::
code::
 for(0,255,{ arg i;
	var a;
	[i,a = i.asAscii,a.isAlphaNum,a.isPrint,a.isPunct,a.isControl].postln;
});
::