control + punctuation doesn't register in terminal

Question

For the purposes of using emacs in a terminal, I want to use key combinations like Control-'. But when I try that key combination, it just writes an ' to the command line. The same thing happens for all punctuation. Is there a way to get around this?

Answer 1

Because of the way ASCII terminals work, Ctrl-' and other such combinations are meaningless.

The ASCII value of a single quote is 39₁₀ and since 39₁₀ and 63₁₀ still equals 39₁₀ you still get a single quote as the result. Only characters with ASCII codes between 64₁₀ and 126₁₀ (inclusive) produce meaningful control codes (0₁₀ through 31₁₀). I've omitted some subtleties for simplicity.

When you're not using an ASCII terminal you can map those key combinations since you're using keyboard scan codes or some equivalent.