Code page 850 ( CCSID 850) (also known as CP 850, IBM 00850, OEM 850, DOS Latin 1) is a

code page In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...

used under DOS and Psion's EPOC16 operating systems in Western Europe. Depending on the country setting and system configuration, code page 850 is the primary code page and default

OEM code page Windows code pages are sets of characters or code pages (known as character encodings in other operating systems) used in Microsoft Windows from the 1980s and 1990s. Windows code pages were gradually superseded when Unicode was implemented in Wind ...

in many countries, including various English-speaking locales (e.g. in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada), whilst other English-speaking locales (like the United States) default to use the

hardware code page In computing, a hardware code page (HWCP) refers to a code page supported natively by a hardware device such as a display adapter or printer. The glyphs to present the characters are stored in the alphanumeric character generator's resident re ...

437 __NOTOC__ Year 437 ( CDXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aetius and Sigisvultus (or, less frequently, year 119 ...

. Code page 850 differs from

code page 437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacri ...

in that many of the box-drawing characters, Greek letters, and various symbols were replaced with additional Latin letters with

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s, thus greatly improving support for Western European languages (all characters from

ISO 8859-1 ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...

are included). At the same time, the changes frequently caused display glitches with programs that made use of the box-drawing characters to display a GUI-like surface in text mode. In 1998,

code page 858 Code page 858 (CCSID 858) (also known as CP 858, IBM 00858, OEM 858) is a code page used under DOS to write Western European languages. Similarly to code page 850, code page 858 supports the entire repertoire of ISO 8859-1, but in a different ...

was derived from this code page by changing code point 213 (D5_hex) from a dotless i ‹ı› to the

euro sign The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...

‹€›. Despite this, IBM's

PC DOS 2000 IBM PC DOS, an acronym for IBM Personal Computer Disk Operating System, is a discontinued disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. It was manufactured and sold by IBM from the early 1980s into the 2000s. Developed by Microsoft, it was also ...

, released in 1998, changed their definition of code page 850 to what they called ''modified code page 850'' now including the euro sign at code point 213 instead of adding support for the new code page 858. Systems largely replaced code page 850 with

Windows-1252 Windows-1252 or CP-1252 ( code page 1252) is a single-byte character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows for English and many European languages including Spanish, French, and German. It ...

which contains all same letters, and later with

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

Character set

Each character appears with its equivalent

code-point. Only the second half of the table (code points 128–255) is shown, the first half (code points 0–127) being the same as

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Code Page 850

850 ''For codepage, see CP850.'' __NOTOC__ Year 850 (Roman numerals, DCCCL) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * February 1 – King Ramiro I of A ...

Character set

See also

Notes

References