# $EPIC: ascii.txt,v 1.2 2006/08/29 20:58:41 jnelson Exp $
======Synopsis:======
$[[ascii]](<character list>)

======Technical:======
The [[ascii]] function converts a sequence of characters into a word list
of codepoints.  Because EPIC only supports latin-1 at this time, all of 
the codepoints are 0 to 255 (strictly 1 byte per codepoint).  If in the 
future epic supports UTF8 or something like that, codepoints greater than 
255 might be returned.

You can use the [[chr]] function to convert a word list of codepoints into
a sequence of characters.  The same caveats about encoding applies.

By definition, the [[ascii]] and [[chr]] functions are symmetrically
reverse operations of each other.

======Examples:======
<file>
/* assume iso8859-1 character set */
$ascii(abcABC)                     returns "97 98 99 65 66 67"
$chr($ascii(abcABC))               returns "abcABC"
</file>

======Other Notes:======
Some characters with the high bit set will return negative numeric
values from $__ascii__().  Add 256 to this negative value to get its
positive equivalent.  The $__chr__() function will accept either.