Code page 437
[] Error: {{Lang}}: no text (help)IBM PC or MS-DOS code page 437, often abbreviated CP437 and also known as, DOS-US, OEM-US or sometimes misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII,[1][2] is the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981.
Characters
The following is a table representing CP437 using the equivalent Unicode characters. Standard ASCII character glyphs are shown as colored cells.
| —0 | —1 | —2 | —3 | —4 | —5 | —6 | —7 | —8 | —9 | width="6 | —E | —F | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0_ | Template:Chset-ctr 0 |
Template:Chset-ce 1 |
Template:Chset-cll2 3 |
Template:Cset-cel2666<' | 66Br >14 | {{chset-cel6<r />21 | 0065}} 101 |
0068}} 104 |
0069}} 105 |
k 006B 107 |
bgcolor="#E7FFE | 7_ | bgcolor="#E7FFt 0074 116 |
u 0075 117 |
bgcolor="#E7FTemplate:Cchset-cell 121 |
007D}} 125 |
~ 007E 126 |
12 | Ç 00C7 128 |
ü 00FC 129 |
é 00E9 130 |
â 00E2 131 |
ä 0E4 132 |
à 00E0 133 |
å 00E5 134 |
{{chbr />135 | Template:Chset-ceEA 136 |
Template:Chset-ce00EF 139 |
î 00EE 140 |
ì 00EC 141 |
Template:Chset-cC4 142 |
Template:Chset00C5 143 |
| Template:Chset-le00E6 145 |
Template:Chset-cel00FB 150 |
{{chset />151 | Template:Chset-cel0DC 154 |
{{br />155 | £ 00A3 156 |
¥ 00A5 157 |
Template:Chset-c0AA 166 |
º 00BA 167 |
¿ 00BF 168 |
⌐ 2310 169 |
Template:Chset-561 181 |
╢ 2562 182 |
╖ 2556 183 |
╕ 2555 184 |
Template:Chset563 185 |
║ 2551 186 |
╗ 2557 187 |
╝ 255D 188 |
╜ 255C 189 |
╛ 255B 190 |
┐ 2510 191 | |||||||||||
| C_ | Template:Chset-c 192 |
┴ 2534 193 |
┬ 252C 194 |
Template:Chset51C 195 |
─ 2500 196 |
┼ 253C 197 |
Template:Chs2554 201 |
╩ 2569 202 |
╦ 2566 203 |
╠ 2560 204 |
═ 2550 205 |
╬ 256C 206 |
╧ 2567 207 | |||||||||||||||||||
| D_ | {/>208 | ╤ 2564 209 |
╥ 2565 210 |
╙ 2559 211 |
╘ 2558 212 |
256B}} 215 |
╪ 256A 216 |
┘ 2518 217 |
┌ 250C 218 |
█ 2588 219 |
▄ 2584 220 |
▌ 258C 221 |
{{chse/>' | br />223 | ||||||||||||||||||
| E_ 225 |
Template:Chset-03C 230 |
{{chset-cel238 | {{chset-cell | {{chset-cel[[Media:Media:Example.ogg[[Media:Media:Example.ogg[[Media:Media:Example.ogg[[Media:Media:Example.ogg[[Media:--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)Example.ogg--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)]]]]]]]]]]/>247 | Template:ChseB0 248 |
∙ 2219 249 |
0 />253--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)--66.41.98.170 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)Subscript text
|
■ 25A0 254 |
00A0 255 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| —0 | —1 | —2 | —3 | —4 | —5 | —6 | —7 | —8 | —9 | —A | —B | —C | —D | —E | —F |
Difference from ASCII
It is based on ASCII, with the following modifications:
- The C0 control range (0x00–0x1F hex) is mapped to graphics characters. The codes can assume their original function as controls, but when placed in display RAM and then viewed in text mode, for example in a screen editor like MS-DOS edit, they show as graphics. The graphics are various, such as smiling faces, card suits and musical notes. Code 0x7F, DEL, similarly shows as a graphic (a house).
- The high-bit range, 0x80–0xFF, is mapped to various symbols: a few European characters (accented Latin vowels, etc) in no particular order and not sufficient for representation of most Western European languages, box drawing characters, mathematical symbols and a few Greek letters commonly used in mathematics and physics.
The repertoire of CP437 was taken from the character set of Wang word-processing machines, according to Bill Gates in an interview with Gates and Paul Allen that in the 2 October 1995 edition of Fortune Magazine:
- "… we were also fascinated by dedicated word processors from Wang, because we believed that general-purpose machines could do that just as well. That's why, when it came time to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we put the funny Wang character set into the machine—you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff. We were thinking we'd like to do a clone of Wang word-processing software someday."
CP437 is inadequate for internationalisation, as it lacks characters necessary for some languages, such as À (capital A with grave) for French and Catalan, and has only a few Greek letters. Later MS-DOS character sets, such as CP850 (DOS Latin-1), CP852 (DOS Central-European) and CP737 (DOS Greek), filled the gaps for international use with some compatibility to with CP437 by retaining the single and double box-drawing characters, while discarding the mixed ones (e.g. horizontal double/vertical single). All CP437 characters are in Unicode and in Microsoft's WGL4 character set, therefore in most of the fonts on Microsoft Windows, and also in the default VGA font of the Linux kernel, and the ISO 10646 fonts for X11.
Implementors of mapping tables to Unicode should note that CP437 unifies some characters that look almost the same (to the eyes of its implementors, not to the eyes of a typographer): 0xE1 is both the German sharp S (U+00DF, ß) and the Greek lowercase beta (U+03B2, β); 0xE4 is both the n-ary summation sign (U+2211, ∑) and the Greek uppercase sigma (U+03A3, Σ); 0xE6 is both the micro sign (U+00B5, µ) and the Greek lowercase mu (U+03BC, μ); 0xEA is both the ohm sign (U+2126, Ω) and the Greek uppercase omega (U+03A9, Ω) (note that in Unicode as well, the ohm sign is canonically equivalent to the capital omega, and its use is discouraged in favor of capital omega[1]); and 0xEE is both the element-of sign (U+2208, ∈) and the Greek lowercase epsilon (U+03B5, ε).
In DOS and Windows, most characters from the currently active DOS code page can be inserted by holding down the Alt key and entering the character's three-digit decimal code on the numpad. This technique is called Windows Alt keycodes. One can find out which DOS code page is currently active by querying mode.com, or by issuing the DOS command chcp.