ECMA-48

ECMA-48 is the European Computer Manufacturers Association standard titled *Control Functions for Coded Character Sets*, first issued in September 1976 and most recently revised as the 5th edition in 1991. It defines the repertoire of control functions — including cursor movement, screen erasure, Select Graphic Rendition (color and text styling), tab setting, and device status reports — together with their coded representations in 7-bit and 8-bit character codes structured per ECMA-35. ECMA-48 was developed by ECMA's TC1 coding committee in close cooperation with ANSI's X3L2 committee. The work was contributed to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 and adopted as ISO/IEC 6429 in 1983; the parallel American national standard is ANSI X3.64 (1979). The three documents are technically aligned, so practitioners often refer to the same sequences as "ANSI", "ECMA-48", or "ISO 6429" interchangeably. The standard is built around the Control Sequence Introducer (CSI), the escape sequence ``ESC [`` (or the single 8-bit byte ``0x9B``), followed by parameters and a final byte that picks the function. SGR (``…m``) handles colors and attributes; CUP (``…H``) positions the cursor; ED (``…J``) erases display; DSR (``…n``) requests status. ECMA-48 also reserved private parameter ranges, which terminal vendors used for extensions like DEC private modes (mouse reporting, bracketed paste, alternate screen buffer). ECMA-48 was historically free to download from ecma-international.org, making it one of the most accessible international standards. It remains the canonical reference for anyone implementing a terminal emulator or a TUI library, though in practice the de facto standard is "what xterm does", which extends ECMA-48 with widely-copied additions like 256-color and 24-bit truecolor SGR parameters.