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I'm getting to grips with Emacs Lisp in GNU Emacs 25.3.2. While trying to understand the printed representation of integers I got confused by the following echo area output produced by C-x C-e:

10
-> 10 (#o12, #xa, ?\C-j)

I gather from the manual section describing the read syntax for integers that #o12 and #xa indicate the octal and hex representations of the decimal number 10 respectively.

What does ?\C-j mean?

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The ?\C-j is the character representation of 10, in this case it's the same as control-j.

For other values, it's more natural, for example 65, which is the ASCII value of A:

65
-> 65 (#o101, #x41, ?A)
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    Ah, right. So the ASCII character corresponding to the decimal number 10 is the LF new line character, and within emacs the key combo to produce that symbol is control-j?
    – Andrew L
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 11:53
  • Yes, within emacs, and within most, if not all, consoles as well.
    – Lindydancer
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 11:55
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    For more information see M-: (info "(elisp) Basic Char Syntax")
    – izkon
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 12:20
  • @AndrewL Note that J is the 10th letter of the alphabet. This is not a coincidence; it is used to determine the print representations of all non-printable ASCII characters, and often these are used for keybindings too (control-C is interrupt because the ASCII interrupt character has code 3).
    – Resigned June 2023
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 16:52

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