How to enter <ESC> or Control Keys?

	I know this is a very basic question, but it keep haunting me
for a while now.  For example if I want to have my screen blank in a
vt100 terminal then I know the sequence '<ESC>[5m' will do, but how do I
enter that into a word processing or editing like 'vi' or 'pico' in
unix?  How do I enter it for DOS?  Thanks for any information.  I know
the ansi.sys driver, and know how to use 'prompt' command to do the
trick, but that's not what I want.  I want to just create the effect
into a file and then type 'type <filename>' or 'cat <filename>' and I
should be about to see the effect.

Xy

To enter an escape character in vi, while in insert mode (that is, after
you press i or a to start adding text) press CONTROL V, and that will enter
an ESC character.

For example, when I want to create a line that is in reverse, I need to
have a line like this:

^[[7m This is in reverse ^[[0m

To set the control characters, press control-v, then control-left bracket,
then press the left bracket by itself, them 7m, any text following this
code will be in reverse. Do the same for the end of the line, instead
place a 0m to turn off the attributes.
-- 
Mehrdad.       ,,,                                  | mka...@oswego.oswego.edu
              (o o)           "The Tazmanian Devil" | mka...@snyoswva.bitnet
 ---------oOO--(_)--OOo-----------------------------| snybcs!oswego!mkarjoo
Senior Operator, ICC, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126 | ta...@oswego.oswego.edu