a. is a list of the elements of the alphabet; it determines
the collating sequence used in grading and sorting (/:
and \:). The content of a. as well as the ordering
of its elements may differ on different computing systems.
The number of elements in the alphabet is given by $a.,
and a 32-column display is given by an expression such as 8 32$a. .
The inclusion of certain control characters (such as the
carriage return) and non-printing characters make such a display
difficult to decipher, but the major alphabet is usually given by:
1 2 3 { 8 32 $ a.
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?
@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_
`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
The index of the carriage return is commonly 13
(as may be tested by entering 13{a.), and the indices of
the space and other characters may be determined as illustrated below:
a. i. 'aA +-*%'
97 65 32 43 45 42 37
The ace (a unit, from Latin as)
is denoted by a: . It is the boxed empty
list <$0 .
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