# $Escape8BitCharactersOnReceive

Type: global configuration parameter

Default: off

Available Since: 5.5.2

Description:

This parameter instructs rsyslogd to replace non US-ASCII characters (those that have the 8th bit set) during reception of the message. This may be useful for some systems. Please note that this escaping breaks Unicode and many other encodings. Most importantly, it can be assumed that Asian and European characters will be rendered hardly readable by this settings. However, it may still be useful when the logs themselves are primarily in English and only occasionally contain local script. If this option is turned on, all control-characters are converted to a 3-digit octal number and be prefixed with the $ControlCharacterEscapePrefix character (being ‘#’ by default).

Warning:

- turning on this option most probably destroys non-western character sets (like Japanese, Chinese and Korean) as well as European character sets.

- turning on this option destroys digital signatures if such exists inside the message

- if turned on, the drop-cc, space-cc and escape-cc property replacer options do not work as expected because control characters are already removed upon message reception. If you intend to use these property replacer options, you must turn off $Escape8BitCharactersOnReceive.

Sample:

`$Escape8BitCharactersOnReceive on`

See also

Help with configuring/using `Rsyslog`:

- Mailing list - best route for general questions

- GitHub: rsyslog source project - detailed questions, reporting issues that are believed to be bugs with `Rsyslog`

- Stack Exchange (View, Ask) - experimental support from rsyslog community

See also

Contributing to `Rsyslog`:

- Source project: rsyslog project README.

- Documentation: rsyslog-doc project README

Copyright 2008-2020 Rainer Gerhards (Großrinderfeld), and Others.