What is the "escape character" for "Epson ESC/P"? Where is this used?

The ESC/P escape character is ESC = 0x1B (hexadecimal), which is decimal 27 — the ASCII Escape control code.

ESC/P ("Epson Standard Code for Printers") is Epson's printer control language. The printer normally treats incoming bytes as characters to print, but when it sees the ESC (0x1B) byte it interprets the following byte(s) as a command rather than printable text. For example, ESC followed by specific codes selects bold, italic, underline, character pitch/font, line spacing, graphics modes, etc. (e.g., ESC E for bold on, ESC @ to reset/initialize the printer). This escape-character mechanism is how in-band formatting commands are embedded in the data stream alongside the text to be printed.

Where it's used: Epson dot-matrix (impact) printers and later inkjet printers, where ESC/P (and its later revision ESC/P 2) became a widely emulated industry standard for printer control. It remains relevant today in point-of-sale receipt printers and impact printers used for multi-part forms (logistics, banking, industrial labeling), many of which still accept ESC/P or ESC/P-compatible command sets.

---