Code page 437

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MS-DOS code pages
437 English
708 Arabic (ASMO)
720 Arabic (Microsoft)
737 Greek
775 Baltic
850 Western European
852 Central European
855 Cyrillic
857 Turkish
858 Western European with euro
860 Portuguese
861 Icelandic
862 Hebrew
863 Canadian French
864 Arabic (IBM)
865 Nordic
866 Russian
869 Greek
Representation of the code page 437 under DOS

The code page 437 used by PC DOS and MS-DOS , CP437 for short, also known as DOS-US or OEM-US, is the original character set of the IBM PC from 1981 and contains the following characters: (The number below the symbol is the Unicode value in hexadecimal notation)

… 0 …1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … 5 … 6 … 7 …8th … 9 … A … B ... C … D … E ... F
0 ... NULL
0 		☺
263A 		☻
263B 		♥
2665 		♦
2666 		♣
2663 		♠
2660 		•
2022 		◘
25D8 		○
25CB 		◙
25D9 		♂
2642 		♀
2640 		♪
266A 		♫
266B 		☼
263C
1… ►
25BA 		◄
25C4 		↕
2195 		‼
203C
B6 		§
A7 		▬
25AC 		↨
21A8 		↑
2191 		↓
2193 		→
2192 		←
2190 		∟
221F 		↔
2194 		▲
25B2 		▼
25BC
2…
20th 		!
21st 		"
22 		#
23 		$
24 		%
25 		&
26 		'
27 		(
28 		)
29 		*
2A 		+
2B 		,
2C 		-
2D 		.
2E 		/
2F
3… 0
30 		1
31 		2
32 		3
33 		4
34 		5
35 		6
36 		7
37 		8
38 		9
39 		:
3A 		;
3B 		<
3C 		=
3D 		>
3E 		?
3F
4… @
40 		A
41 		B
42 		C
43 		D
44 		E
45 		F
46 		G
47 		H
48 		I
49 		J
4A 		K
4B 		L
4C 		M
4D 		N
4E 		O
4F
5… P
50 		Q
51 		R
52 		P.
53 		T
54 		U
55 		V
56 		W
57 		X
58 		Y
59 		Z
5A 		[
5B 		\
5C 		]
5D 		^
5E 		_
5F
6… `
60 		a
61 		b
62 		c
63 		d
64 		e
65 		f
66 		g
67 		h
68 		i
69 		j
6A 		k
6B 		l
6C 		m
6D 		n
6E 		o
6F
7… p
70 		q
71 		r
72 		p
73 		t
74 		u
75 		v
76 		w
77 		x
78 		y
79 		z
7A 		{
7B 		|
7C 		}
7D 		~
7E 		⌂
2302
8th… Ç
C7 		ü
FC 		é
E9 		â
E2 		ä
E4 		à
E0 		å
E5 		ç
E7 		ê
EA 		ë
EB 		è
E8 		ï
EF 		î
EE 		ì
EC 		Ä
C4 		Å
C5
9 ... É
C9 		æ
E6 		Æ
C6 		ô
F4 		ö
F6 		ò
F2 		û
FB 		ù
F9 		ÿ
FF 		Ö
D6 		Ü
DC 		¢
A2 		£
A3 		¥
A5 		₧
20A7 		ƒ
192
A ... á
E1 		í
ED 		ó
F3 		ú
FA 		ñ
F1 		Ñ
D1 		ª
AA 		º
BA 		¿
BF 		⌐
2310 		¬
AC 		½
BD 		¼
BC 		¡
A1 		«
AB 		“
BB
B ... Ø
2591 		▒
2592 		▓
2593 		│
2502 		┤
2524 		╡
2561 		╢
2562 		╖
2556 		╕
2555 		╣
2563 		║
2551 		╗
2557 		╝
255D 		╜
255C 		╛
255B 		┐
2510
C ... └
2514 		┴
2534 		┬
252C 		├
251C 		─
2500 		┼
253C 		╞
255E 		╟
255F 		╚
255A 		╔
2554 		╩
2569 		╦
2566 		╠
2560 		═
2550 		╬
256C 		╧
2567
D ... ╨
2568 		╤
2564 		╥
2565 		╙
2559 		╘
2558 		╒
2552 		╓
2553 		╫
256B 		╪
256A 		┘
2518 		┌
250C 		█
2588 		▄
2584 		▌
258C 		▐
2590 		▀
2580
E ... α
3B1 		ß
DF 		Γ
393 		π
3C0 		Σ
3A3 		σ
3C3 		µ
B5 		τ
3C4 		Φ
3A6 		Θ
398 		Ω
3A9 		δ
3B4 		∞
221E 		φ
3C6 		ε
3B5 		∩
2229
F ... ≡
2261 		±
B1 		≥
2265 		≤
2264 		⌠
2320 		⌡
2321 		÷
F7 		≈
2248 		°
B0 		∙
2219 		·
B7 		√
221A 		ⁿ
207F 		²
B2 		■
25A0 		NBSP
A0
… 0 …1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … 5 … 6 … 7 …8th … 9 … A … B ... C … D … E ... F

The character set is based on ASCII , with the following changes and additions:

  • The character 7C, the "vertical bar", is displayed on almost all graphics cards as the Unicode character A6 hex = "¦", the broken bar.
  • The control character range 00 hex –1F hex is assigned various graphic characters that are not printable with the exception of the paragraph character §, which on the one hand can be used in their actual function for control, the character 07 hex generated under DOS by entering the command line echo Leertaste Strg+ for example to output a beep (even in the DOS emulation of Vista and Windows 7 ), but also to be displayed on the screen with suitable text editors. The graphic symbols used for this area are very different, from smiley faces to playing card colors to musical notes.G Enter
  • The code 7F hex is also reserved for a control character called DEL - its screen display shows a small house as a graphic.
Comparison of characters in the range E0 to EF under different IBM graphics standards.
  • Various symbols are assigned to the range 80 hex to FF hex : some European characters (Latin vowels with accents, etc.) in no particular order and insufficient for most European languages, as well as block graphic characters, mathematical symbols and some Greek letters, one of which is the small beta (β) must also serve as a German ß . CGA and EGA render it as β, VGA as ß.
  • The subregion of C0 hex to DF hex was formed exclusively for graphic characters ( frame characters , English box drawing characters ) used as the MDA graphics cards of the first IBM PC (and later the VGA cards) these characters treated separately: is in text mode ie Each character is 9 pixels wide in order to increase the distance between the characters and thus the legibility, while the fonts themselves only contain 8 pixels wide characters, so the 9th pixel column is usually simply drawn in the background color. In the case of the frame characters, however, this would have resulted in unsightly gaps between the characters, which is why a special register in the graphics card was used to ensure that the 9th pixel column is displayed as a repetition of the 8th pixel column for all frame characters that have connecting lines pointing to the right and these characters have been combined in the range from C0 hex to DF hex for easier management .

The repertoire of CP437 was borrowed from the character set of the Wang word processing machines, which Bill Gates explicitly admitted in an interview with him and Paul Allen :

“We were also fascinated by the special word processing systems from Wang, because we believed that all-purpose machines could solve these tasks just as well. For this reason, when the time came to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we packed the funny Wang character set into the machine - you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff like that. We thought that one day we would like to write a clone of the Wang word processing software. "

- Bill Gates

The character encoding CP437 lacks characters that are necessary for many Western European languages; such as accented capital letters for French. It also contains only a few Greek characters . Later MS-DOS character sets, for example code page 850 (DOS-Latin-1 and its Euro variant, code page 858 ), code page 852 (DOS Central-European) and code page 737 (DOS Greek), filled the gaps for international use, whereby they remained compatible with code page 437 in that they retained most of the characters (except for some of the block graphic characters and math symbols).

All characters from CP437 are now included in the Unicode character set and in Microsoft's WGL4 character set (and thus also in most fonts under Microsoft Windows ), as well as in the VGA font under Linux and the ISO 10646 fonts for X11 . An unadulterated display of texts that were created on CP437-based computers, i.e. all older DOS texts, is only possible on modern Windows systems with the Microsoft font MS-LineDraw, which must be installed separately (see below), furthermore ( with the exception of a few characters) with the system font terminal .

CP437 uses the same assignment for some characters that look similar: Code E1 hex stands for both the German Eszett ß (U + 00DF) and the small beta β (U + 03B2); the apostrophe '(27 hex ) is also used as an acute acute .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fortune Magazine , October 2, 1995