Or, metacharacters, is a character having a special meaning to UNIX. For example, the UNIX shell interprets the ? character to stand for any single character.
Any text other than the standard alphanumeric characters, ` ~ @ # $ % ^ & * () - + { } [ ] | \ " ' : ; ? / , JUST TO NAME A FEW.
Special characters are those which are not alphanumeric, such as "#," "*," "@," and "%." Including special characters in a password makes the password more difficult for a potential intruder to guess.
Certain special characters and foreign letters may be added to a web page using special codes. Examples: && ©©¢¢<¿¿ÑÑ>çǺô¥¥ ±±¶¶
non-alphanumeric characters such as the at sign (@) and backslash(\).
Characters which cause special and/or unexpected things to happen. There are two major sets of these characters: special terminal and special shell characters (see tables following this glossary). Note: Not all shells support or allow all of these special characters.
A library of codes that will enable you to print special characters to the screen.
Special typographic characters can be difficult to represent in the web catalogues as not all characters have corresponding code in HTML. If you require the inclusion of special characters (particularly scientific symbols) in your programmes or units and you know of a way to represent these on the web, please send this information along with the relevant description.
A character that is not alphabetic or numeric. Punctuation marks, for example, are special characters. Any unusual character included with a font package also is considered a special character.
Non-alphabetic or non-numeric characters, such as @, #, $, %, &, * and +.
Special characters have been given pronunciations similar to letters and numbers in a radio alphabet. The most common pronunciations originated with users of Unix systems (users of Windows systems consider all characters to be special).
