Bell character
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bell character is an ASCII control character, code 7 (^G
). When it is sent to a printer or a terminal, nothing is printed, but an audible signal is emitted instead. Terminal emulator windows often flash briefly to show the user where the alert occurred.
A bell code also exists in Baudot code, which has been used in teleprinters in some form since 1874. Sending a bell code would get the attention of the teleprinter operator at the other end of the line.
In the C programming language, the bell character is represented as '\a'
("alert" or "audible").
In the Windows Command prompt, as with the earlier PC-DOS or MS-DOS command prompts on which it is based, the user can type the word "echo" followed by a CTRL+G, which will appear as
echo ^G
and when the user presses enter, the computer will emit a beep sound.