Base characters (The GNU Algol 68 Compiler)

### 5.3 Base characters ¶

The worthy characters described in the previous section are to be interpreted symbolically rather than visually. The worthy character `|`, for example, is the vertical line character and generally looks the same in every system. The worthy character `space` is obviously referred by a symbolic name.

The actual visually distinguishable characters available in an installation are known as base characters. The Standard Hardware Representation allows implementations the possibility of using two or more base characters to represent a single worthy character. This was the case of the `|` character, which was represented in many implementations by either `|` or `!`.

This compiler uses the set of base characters corresponding to the subset of the Unicode character set that maps one to one to the set of worthy characters described in the previous section:

    A-Z   65-90
    a-z   97-122
    space 32
    tab   9
    !     33
    "     34
    $     36
    %     37
    &     38
    '     39
    (     40
    )     41
    *     42
    +     43
    ,     44
    -     45
    .     46
    /     47
    :     58
    ;     59
    <     60
    =     61
    >     62
    ?     63
    @     64
    [     91
    \     92
    ]     93
    ^     94
    _     95
    |     124
    ~     126