added docs on flexible string character mapping to petscii

README.md

@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ What does Prog8 provide?
 - fast execution speed due to compilation to native assembly code. It's possible to write certain raster interrupt 'demoscene' effects purely in Prog8.
 - modularity, symbol scoping, subroutines
 - various data types other than just bytes (16-bit words, floats, strings)
+- Strings can contain excaped characters but also many symbols directly if they have a petscii equivalent, such as "♠♥♣♦π▚●○╳". Characters like ^, _, \, {, } and | are also accepted and converted to the closest petscii equivalents.
 - automatic static variable allocations, automatic string and array variables and string sharing
 - subroutines with input parameters and result values
 - high-level program optimizations

docs/source/index.rst

@@ -56,6 +56,7 @@ Language features
 - Variables are allocated statically
 - Nested subroutines can access variables from outer scopes to avoids the overhead to pass everything via parameters
 - Variable data types include signed and unsigned bytes and words, arrays, strings and floats.
+- Strings can contain excaped characters but also many symbols directly if they have a petscii equivalent, such as "♠♥♣♦π▚●○╳". Characters like ^, _, \\, {, } and | are also accepted and converted to the closest petscii equivalents.
 - High-level code optimizations, such as const-folding, expression and statement simplifications/rewriting.
 - Many built-in functions, such as ``sin``, ``cos``, ``rnd``, ``abs``, ``min``, ``max``, ``sqrt``, ``msb``, ``rol``, ``ror``, ``swap``, ``sort`` and ``reverse``
 - Programs can be run multiple times without reloading because of automatic variable (re)initializations.

docs/source/syntaxreference.rst

@@ -425,6 +425,9 @@ There are several escape sequences available to put special characters into your
 - ``\uHHHH`` - a unicode codepoint \u0000 - \uffff (16-bit hexadecimal)
 - ``\xHH`` - 8-bit hex value that will be copied verbatim *without encoding*
 
+- String literals can contain many symbols directly if they have a petscii equivalent, such as "♠♥♣♦π▚●○╳".
+  Characters like ^, _, \\, {, } and | (that have no direct PETSCII counterpart) are still accepted and converted to the closest PETSCII equivalents. (Make sure you save the source file in UTF-8 encoding if you use this.)
+
 
 Operators
 ---------

examples/test.p8

@@ -5,12 +5,7 @@
 main {
 
     sub start() {
-        txt.print("^\n")
-        txt.print("_\n")
-        txt.print("{\n")
-        txt.print("}\n")
-        txt.print("|\n")
-        txt.print("\\\n")
+        txt.print("♠♥♣♦π▚●○╳")
     }
 }