│
Box Drawing 3
- Unicode
- U+2502
- Category
- Dingbats
- HTML Entity
- │
- CSS
- \2502
The Box Drawing Light Vertical symbol (│) is a foundational character from early computing, originally designed to build text-based user interfaces and menus. Today, developers still use it in terminal environments to draw ASCII art, format console tables, and map out hierarchical data like file directories. Unlike the standard keyboard pipe (|), this character connects seamlessly with other box-drawing symbols to form continuous, unbroken vertical lines.
How to Type
- Windows
- Alt+179 or Alt+9474
- macOS
- Control+Command+Space then search "box drawing"
- Linux
- Ctrl+Shift+U then 2502
- HTML
- │ or │
In Programming
Programmers use this symbol in command-line tools to render text-based UIs, continuous table borders, and visual directory trees. It spans the full height of the character cell to prevent gaps when stacked vertically alongside other box-drawing characters.
Tags
ASCII art vertical
Unicode vertical bar
border
box drawing
directory tree line
file tree character
light vertical line
line
pipe character alternative
plain-text separator
table
terminal table column
text vertical border
vertical