From: Theo Buehler Subject: Re: 007 in vis.c To: "Todd C. Miller" Cc: Miod Vallat , tech@openbsd.org Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2025 00:45:40 +0200 On Mon, Aug 04, 2025 at 03:23:14PM -0600, Todd C. Miller wrote: > On Mon, 04 Aug 2025 06:47:03 -0000, Miod Vallat wrote: > > > > I'm not sure if there's a particular reason to treat the BEL character > > > specially here. The \a escape has been available forever. It's in K&R. > > > I think it's clearer, cleaner, and more consistent to use that. > > > > But then you'll need to address the many other uses of \007 in the tree. > > > > And for the reason why \a is not used, have a look at the comment in > > bin/ksh/c_ksh.c: at some point, pcc did not support \a. > > While I would not object to changing this throughout the tree I > don't think everything needs to be converted in one fell swoop. I can convert them but I don't insist. miod gave me the answer I was looking for: why? The one-step vs two-step musings are less convincing since they don't really explain why \r and \b are much more prevalent than their octal representations.