Incomputing, control-\ is a control characterinASCII code and the Basic Latin code block of Unicode, also known as the file separatororfield separator (FS) character. It is generated by pressing the \ key while holding down the Ctrl key on a computer keyboard, and has the decimal value 28 (or 1c in hexadecimal). It is the highest-level of the four separators in the ASCII C0 and C1 control codes; the others are control-] (group separator), control-^ (record separator), and control-_ (unit separator).[1] It was one of eight codes reserved as separators in the 1963 version of the ASCII standard;[2] these were reduced to four separators in a 1965 revision of the standard.[3]
In its use as a file separator, this character can be used to subdivide textual data into records or other semantic units; for instance, it has this role in the ANSI/NIST-ITL Standard Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information.[1]
Under most UNIX-based operating systems control-\ is used to terminate a running process from a command shell and have it produce a memory core dump by sending it a SIGQUIT signal.[4] Other similar ways of terminating or interrupting a shell process include Control-C, Control-Z, and the kill command.
As a character that can be easily typed on most keyboards, but with no standardized meaning, control-\ is often used as a keyboard shortcut in different graphical user interfaces, with various unrelated effects. For instance, some versions of Windows File Manager use it to de-select all selected files.[5]InAdobe InDesign, it has been used to mark a point in a line of text as the starting position of a hanging indent.[6]
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