escape

Syntax:: escape(string)

The top-level function, escape, encodes the string that is contained in the string argument to make it portable. A string is considered portable if it can be transmitted across any network to any computer that supports ASCII characters.

To make a string portable, characters other than the following 69 ASCII characters must be encoded:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890
@*-_+./

All other characters are converted either to their two digit (%xx) or four digit (%uxxxx) hexadecimal equivalent (refered to as the character's "hexadecimal escape sequence"). For example, a blank space will be represented by %20 and a semicolon by %3B. (Note that the hexadecimal numbers are: 0123456789ABCDEF).

Use the unescape function to decode an encoded sequence that was created using escape.