Printing the character from an ascii number

[severedhand]

If I have a number in a variable, can Inform print the ascii character of that number?

I searched my docs high and low for this but the word ‘ascii’ only appears once in all the Inform 7 built in Docs.

I’m trying to stick my hand into the data of Mark Tilford’s Automap and draw the map myself using an I7 routine, dispensing with his I6 routine. The reason for this is that I can send my own automap to any window I like, whereas the native automap is drawn directly into the status window.

Thanks.

• Wade

[capmikee]

That’s because Inform doesn’t use ASCII, it uses ZSCII. A search for the text “zscii” revealed this:

inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s1.html#p40

Inform provides a stock of special printing rules built-in, and also allows the programmer to create new ones. The most important rules are:

(char) print out the character which this is the ZSCII code for
(string) print out this string
(address) print out the text of this dictionary word
(name) print out the name of this object (see §3)

If you really want ASCII and not ZSCII, you might need a conversion table. But if my guess is correct that the values 0-127 are the same in both, you’re probably fine.

To say character number (N - a number): (- print (char) {N}; -)

[zarf (Andrew Plotkin)]

The nitpick is that ASCII only defines values 0-127. Everything beyond that is non-ASCII.

Z-code uses ZSCII; Glulx uses Unicode. Both agree on values 32-127. (Don’t print control characters, except for newline.)

This is safer all around:

To decide what Unicode character is Unicode char number (N - a number): (- {N} -).

When printing Unicode characters, you get the same result on both platforms.

[capmikee]

Thanks, Zarf! I like the way I7 does typecasting, but I forget to use it sometimes.

[severedhand]

Thanks for the info guys.

• Wade