Discretionary characters (was: ... '[tilde]' Question)

[Eric Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

On 7-11-98, Stephen Moore wrote (in part)

>Said character [i.e. the new choice of discretionary-hyphen character]
>will ... be the new soft hypen. A good choice might be one of the
>IBM-specific characters between ASCII 1 and ASCII 31, excepting those
>that have special meanings such as 10 (LF), 13 (CR), 26 (EOF),
>27 (ESC), etc.

The devil is in the detail(s).[see Postscript] Is there any convenient way
of identifying *all* the low-ASCII characters "that have special meanings"?
When I first began playing around with XyWrite, I found some of my files
and/or XPL routines doing funny things because I hadn't been warned about
what some characters do. I'd still like to use odd characters (e.g. ASCII
127, the "small house" figure) as note-indicators or for other purposes,
and I always hesitate for fear of unintended consequences.

Cheers
Eric Van Tassel


Postscript: "The devil ..." would be a good sig-file tag line for anyone
dealing with computers; but can anyone identify the source for me, and/or
confirm whether the original was "detail" or "details"?
  A phrase that I've seen attributed to Einstein -- "Raffiniert ist der
Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht" -- would also make a good computer
tag line -- so long as one isn't misread as alluding to Master Gates. (My
translation = "The Lord God is subtle, but he isn't malicious.")