pipe code - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

Pipe codes were a format of screen controls specific to particular BBS softwares (eg. [Telegard], [Renegade], [Mystic], and ENiGMA all used pipe codes, among others -- WWIV eventually did, after a period where it only supported proprietary "heart codes" that worked similarly) that would, simply put, read numbers written following a pipe character (|) and use that information to do things like change the display colour or cursor position on the screen. The ANSI standard already did that, but pipe codes could achieve the same thing faster and take up less space while doing it, and do so according to templates that could be easily changed across the board. Some ANSI art editors (TheDraw, DOS-era Pablo) could optionally be specified to save ANSI art screens to the pipe code standard rather than as ANSI screens.

Other competing "standards" to achieve similar ends include Ctrl-A codes on Synchronet BBSes and similar but different systems on [PCBoard] (@Xxx), [Wildcat] (@xx@), and [Celerity] (¦x) BBSes.