What ␝ means
It shows a separation between groups of data. A control character gives software an instruction or marks structure instead of displaying an ordinary letter. ␝ gives one such invisible character a visible label, useful in documentation and readable representations of data.
GS abbreviates the English name Group Separator. In the traditional hierarchy, a file contains groups, groups contain records, and records contain units. Think of a record as one complete entry and a unit as a smaller part of it. ASCII, an early text-encoding standard, documented these four levels of separation by 1969.
That hierarchy does not prescribe every file format. The 1991 control-character standard ECMA-48 leaves the separators’ precise meanings to the application. To interpret a particular file, use that format’s definition of a group.
Technical notation for showing data structure.
Replacing the actual GS control character with ␝ can stop software from separating data correctly.
Part of the collection
Related characters
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Questions people ask
2Which character do I need for an actual GS separator?
Use the control character U001D, decimal 29, when the data format requires GS. ␝ is its printable representation. They are different characters, so substituting one for the other changes the data.
Is ␝ just the two letters GS?
No. ␝ is one character whose design combines G and S. Typing GS produces two ordinary letters; neither that pair nor ␝ is the invisible control character.
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How to type or find ␝
- Search it as
- GS symbol · ASCII GS · group separator · control picture · G over S
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
␝\241DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.