Code page

IBM CJK Code Page Numbers

Code page

A code page is a character encoding scheme used in computing to represent a specific set of characters. Code pages are used to map a set of characters to a specific numerical value, allowing computers to store and manipulate text. They are essential for ensuring that text is displayed correctly across different systems and platforms.

History

The concept of code pages originated with early computer systems, which needed a way to represent text characters in binary form. One of the earliest and most well-known code pages is ASCII, which stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII uses a 7-bit binary number to represent 128 different characters, including letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters.

Types of Code Pages

There are many different types of code pages, each designed to support different languages and character sets. Some of the most common code pages include:

• ASCII
• ISO/IEC 8859
• Windows-1252
• UTF-8
• EBCDIC

ASCII

ASCII is one of the earliest and most widely used code pages. It uses a 7-bit binary number to represent 128 different characters.

ISO/IEC 8859

ISO/IEC 8859 is a series of 8-bit character encodings that support various languages and scripts. Each part of the series supports a different set of characters.

Windows-1252

Windows-1252 is a code page used by Microsoft Windows to represent text in Western European languages. It is an extension of ISO/IEC 8859-1.

UTF-8

UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding used for electronic communication. It can represent every character in the Unicode character set.

EBCDIC

EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is a character encoding used by IBM mainframes. It is different from ASCII and is not widely used outside of IBM systems.

Usage

Code pages are used in various applications, including text processing, data storage, and communication. They are essential for ensuring that text is displayed correctly across different systems and platforms. For example, a text file created on a Windows system using the Windows-1252 code page may not display correctly on a Unix system unless the correct code page is used.

Related Concepts

• Character encoding
• Unicode
• Glyph
• Font
• Text file

See Also

• Character encoding
• Unicode
• Glyph
• Font
• Text file