Below is a list of accepted stream directive characters, and alternate forms of input for characters which might not be available on certain terminals. (Note that some terminals might not print all the characters below correctly.)
| \A | @ (commercial at sign) |
| \B | Expand buffer (octal 030 or control x) |
| \C | Take next character literally (octal 036 or control ^) |
| \E | Introduce name of regular expression (octal 026 or control v) |
| \F | End input mode (octal 034 or control \) |
| \G | (bell) |
| \H | (back space) |
| \L | Expand buffer literally (octal 031 or control y) |
| \N | Insert number (octal 003 or control c) |
| \O | Use special meaning of next character (octal 027 or control w) |
| \R | Read from terminal (octal 035 or control ]) |
| \S | Expand buffer literally stripping <nl>s (octal 032 or control z) |
| \W | File associated with current buffer (octal 037) |
| \\ | \ (backslash) |
| \( | { (left brace) |
| \) | } (right brace) |
| \! | | (or bar) |
| \= | ~ (tilde or not sign) |
| \_ | ` (grave accent) |
| \ | <tab> (escape blank) |
| \; | <carriage return> |
| \ddd | ASCII character ddd (octal) |
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