What means
The receiver could inspect the next word or value and leave it in place.
Smalltalk is an early programming language developed at Xerox PARC, Xerox’s research lab. It treats program parts as “objects” that send requests called messages; the receiver can check what comes next and leave it available.
Smalltalk took shape in summer 1972 and reached more Xerox PARC users by spring 1973. Its March 1976 manual calls this sign “keyhole, peek”; a 2021 Unicode proposal preserves that use in digital text.
Questions people ask
1Why does the keyhole show as a box?
A font without this glyph may show a missing-character box. The text remains ; a font that supports it supplies the outline.
How to type
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 1CEB1, then Alt+X to get .
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “keyhole”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 1ceb1, then Enter or Space.
HTML
𜺱CSS
\1CEB1Smalltalk-72 keyboard
The March 1976 manual lists Ctrl+K for the keyhole; that shortcut belongs to this historical system, not general Unicode input.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
𜺱
HTML hex
𜺱
CSS content
content: "\1CEB1";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9C%BA%B1
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.