Alternate delimiters (for sed) above decimal 127? (was Re: sed question)

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Saturday, December 07, 2019 07:20:35 AM The Wanderer wrote:
> Yep - using '/' is only a standard convention, it's not required. When
> writing an s-expression which I know will be passed a path, I generally
> use '@' myself; that A: is conveniently typable on the keyboard, B: is a
> comparatively rare character to find in either path or filename, C:
> doesn't have special meaning as part of a regular expression, and D:
> unlike most of the other characters that fit the other criteria, isn't
> treated specially by most shells that I know of.
> 
> 
> `~!#$&*()={}|\;"'<> are all treated specially by bash, in at least some
> circumstances. (Assuming I haven't mixed anything up.)
> 
> $^*()+[]|\.? are treated specially as part of a regular expression.
> 
> !%&()_+=-:;'",./? are comparatively common in paths and/or filenames.
> 
> As far as I can see, at least on my keyboard, that pretty much just
> leaves @. It does still sometimes occur in paths and filenames, so it's
> not really ideal, but it's probably less common there than any of the
> non-special-meaning others.

I'm not the OP, but thanks for the explanation / discussion.

I just have a wild idea / question.  Those are (iirc) all ASCII characters, 
(basically 7 bits) (yes, I know they are in an 8 bit byte), I wonder if SED 
(and AWK) could use something in, well, is it called the 2nd code page (I 
forget), but some character like the degree symbol (which, iirc, is something 
like 240 octal?).  Also, although I haven't used it in a very long time, it 
seems there is (or was) a means to do something like type <alt>240 to actually 
enter the degree sign.

Oh, hmm, <alt>240 doesn't do it, maybe something has changed (or, more likely, 
I'm mis-remembering ;-)