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Code page 850
Code page

Code page 850 (CCSID 850) (also known as CP 850, IBM 00850, OEM 850, DOS Latin 1) is a code page used under DOS 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 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 the hardware code page 437.

Code page 850 differs from code page 437 in that many of the box-drawing characters, Greek letters, and various symbols were replaced with additional Latin letters with diacritics, thus greatly improving support for Western European languages (all characters from ISO 8859-1 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.

After the DOS era, successor operating systems largely replaced code page 850 with Windows-1252, later UCS-2 and UTF-16, and finally UTF-8. However, legacy applications, especially command-line programs, may still depend on support for older code pages.

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Character set

Each non-ASCII character appears with its equivalent Unicode code-point. Differences from code page 437 are limited to the second half of the table, the first half being the same.

Code page 850910111213
0123456789ABCDEF
0x0NUL☺︎263A☻263B♥︎2665♦︎2666♣︎2663♠︎2660•2022◘25D8○25CB◙25D9♂︎2642♀︎2640♪266A♫266B☼263C
1x16►25BA◄25C4↕︎2195‼︎203C00B6§00A7▬25AC↨21A8↑2191↓2193→2192←2190∟221F↔︎2194▲25B2▼25BC
2x32 SP !"#$%&'()*+,-./
3x480123456789:;<=>?
4x64@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
5x80PQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_
6x96`abcdefghijklmno
7x112pqrstuvwxyz{|}~⌂2302
8x128Ç00C7ü00FCé00E9â00E2ä00E4à00E0å00E5ç00E7ê00EAë00EBè00E8ï00EFî00EEì00ECÄ00C4Å00C5
9x144É00C9æ00E6Æ00C6ô00F4ö00F6ò00F2û00FBù00F9ÿ00FFÖ00D6Ü00DCø00F8£00A3Ø00D8×00D7ƒ0192
Ax160á00E1í00EDó00F3ú00FAñ00F1Ñ00D1ª00AAº00BA¿00BF®00AE¬00AC½00BD¼00BC¡00A1«00AB»00BB
Bx176░2591▒2592▓2593│2502┤2524Á00C1Â00C2À00C0©00A9╣2563║2551╗2557╝255D¢00A2¥00A5┐2510
Cx192└2514┴2534┬252C├251C─2500┼253Cã00E3Ã00C3╚255A╔2554╩2569╦2566╠2560═2550╬256C¤00A4
Dx208ð00F0Ð00D0Ê00CAË00CBÈ00C8ı0131Í00CDÎ00CEÏ00CF┘2518┌250C█2588▄2584¦00A6Ì00CC▀2580
Ex224Ó00D3ß00DFÔ00D4Ò00D2õ00F5Õ00D5µ00B5þ00FEÞ00DEÚ00DAÛ00DBÙ00D9ý00FDÝ00DD¯00AF´00B4
Fx240SHY00AD±00B1‗2017¾00BE00B6§00A7÷00F7¸00B8°00B0¨00A8·00B7¹00B9³00B3²00B2■25A0NBSP00A0
  Differences from code page 437

Code page 858

In 1998, code page 858 (CCSID 858)14 (also known as CP 858, IBM 00858, OEM 85815) was derived from this code page by changing code point 213 (D5hex) from a dotless i ⟨ı⟩ to the euro sign ⟨€⟩ U+20AC.161718 Unlike most code pages modified to support the euro sign, the generic currency sign at CFhex was not chosen as the character to replace (compare ISO-8859-15 (from ISO-8859-1), code pages 808 (from 866), 848 (from 1125), 849 (from 1131) and 872 (from 855), ISO-IR-205 (from ISO-8859-4), ISO-IR-206 (from ISO-8859-13), and the changes to MacRoman and MacCyrillic).

Instead of adding support for the new code page 858, IBM's PC DOS 2000, also released in 1998, changed the definition of the existing code page 850 to what IBM called modified code page 850 to include the euro sign at code point 213.1920212223 The reason for this might have been due to restrictions in MS-DOS/PC DOS, which limited .CPI files to 64 KB in size or about six codepages maximum. Adding support for codepage 858 might have meant to drop another (e.g. codepage 850) at the same time, which might not have been a viable solution at that time, given that some applications were hard-wired to use codepage 850. More recent IBM/MS products implemented codepage 858 under its own ID.

See also

Notes

References

  1. "00850" (PDF). Code pages by CPGID. IBM. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-09-23. Retrieved 2020-02-24. https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP00850.pdf ↩

  2. "OEM 850". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20160606181344/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305160 ↩

  3. "Code Page 850 MS-DOS Latin 1". Developing International Software. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc195064.aspx ↩

  4. as well as Psion's EPOC16 operating system /wiki/Psion_(company) ↩

  5. "CCSID 850 information document". Archived from the original on 2016-03-27. https://web.archive.org/web/20160327100212/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid850.html ↩

  6. Paul, Matthias R. (1997-07-30). "II.16.iii. Landessprachliche Unterstützung - Landescodes und Keyboard-Kürzel" [II.16.iii. National language support - Country codes and keyboard layout IDs]. NWDOS-TIPs — Tips & Tricks rund um Novell DOS 7, mit Blick auf undokumentierte Details, Bugs und Workarounds [NWDOSTIPs — Tips & tricks for Novell DOS 7, with special focus on undocumented details, bugs and workarounds]. MPDOSTIP (in German) (3 ed.). Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. (NB. NWDOSTIP.TXT is a comprehensive work on Novell DOS 7 and OpenDOS 7.01, including the description of many undocumented features and internals. It is part of the author's yet larger MPDOSTIP.ZIP collection maintained up to 2001 and distributed on many sites at the time. The provided link points to a HTML-converted older version of the NWDOSTIP.TXT file.) https://web.archive.org/web/20160606185230/http://www.antonis.de/dos/dos-tuts/mpdostip/html/nwdostip.htm ↩

  7. akin to and not always well-distinguished from ISO-8859-1 /wiki/ISO-8859-1 ↩

  8. The Windows NT line was natively Unicode from the start, but issues of development tool support and compatibility with Windows 9x kept most applications on the 8-bit code pages. /wiki/Windows_NT ↩

  9. "OEM 850". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20160606181344/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305160 ↩

  10. "cp850_DOSLatin1 to Unicode table" (TXT). The Unicode Consortium. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. https://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP850.TXT ↩

  11. Code Page CPGID 00850 (pdf), IBM, 1986 https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP00850.pdf ↩

  12. Code Page (CPGID) 00850 (txt), IBM, 1998 https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP00850.txt ↩

  13. "International Components for Unicode (ICU), ibm-850_P100-1995.ucm". GitHub. 2002-12-03. Archived from the original on 2022-01-28. Retrieved 2022-01-28. https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/blob/master/icu4c/source/data/mappings/ibm-850_P100-1995.ucm ↩

  14. "CCSID 858 information document". IBM. Archived from the original on 2016-03-27. https://web.archive.org/web/20160327022326/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid858.html ↩

  15. "OEM 850". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20160606181344/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305160 ↩

  16. Code Page (CPGID) 00858 (txt), IBM, 1998 https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP00858.txt ↩

  17. "00858". Code pages by CPGID. IBM. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp00858.html ↩

  18. "Code page 858 information document". IBM. Archived from the original on 2016-08-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20160820152600/https://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp00858.html ↩

  19. Paul, Matthias R. (2001-08-15). "Changing codepages in FreeDOS" (Technical design specification). Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-06-06. The new official ID for the Multilingual "codepage 850 with EURO SIGN" is 858, not 850. IBM will switch to use 858 instead of their 850 variant with future issues of their products. […] I can only guess why they didn't add 858 to their EGAx.CPI, COUNTRY.SYS, and KEYBOARD.SYS files in PC DOS 2000. Many third-party applications are designed to work with 850 and didn't know about 858 at the time PC DOS 2000 was released, so it's easier for everyone, but unfortunately it's not compatible. […] As explained above, COUNTRY.SYS and KEYBOARD.SYS contain only two codepage entries for a given country in Western issues of DOS. (In Arabic and Hebrew issues there can be up to 8 codepages for one country, in theory there is no limit below the range of allowed codepages 1..65534). […] The problem is that removing support for 850 might have caused compatibility problems with applications which are hard-wired to use 850. Adding 858 as a third choice to all the files would have increased the file and table sizes significantly. The COUNTRY.SYS file parser in MS-DOS/PC DOS IO.SYS/IBMBIO.COM sets aside a 6 Kb (for DOS 6) scratchpad to load all the info. This allows a maximum of 438 entries in a COUNTRY.SYS file to be accepted, otherwise you will get the message "COUNTRY.SYS too large.". The NLSFUNC parser does not have this limitation, and the file parsers in DR-DOS (kernel and NLSFUNC) also do not know of such a restriction. Older issues of MS-DOS/PC DOS even had a 2 Kb buffer for a maximum of 146 entries. https://web.archive.org/web/20160606182501/http://www.freedos.org/technotes/technote/txt/141.txt ↩

  20. Paul, Matthias R. (2001-06-10) [1995]. "DOS COUNTRY.SYS file format" (COUNTRY.LST file) (1.44 ed.). Archived from the original on 2016-04-20. Retrieved 2016-08-20. http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/MatthiasPaulCPI.zip ↩

  21. Starikov, Yuri (2005-04-11). "15-летию Russian MS-DOS 4.01 посвящается" [15 Years of Russian MS-DOS 4.01] (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2014-05-07. http://rdos401.org/ ↩

  22. Paul, Matthias R. (2001-08-27). "Changing codepages in FreeDOS (follow-up)". Archived from the original on 2014-10-01. Retrieved 2013-05-08. […] one could also create custom .CPI files in the traditional FONT style without difficulties, but you could only store up to […] six codepages in such a file if it should be useable by MS-DOS/PC DOS (some OEM issues and NT can handle files larger than 64 Kb, but MS-DOS/PC DOS can not). (NB. Based on fd-dev post [1].) https://marc.info/?l=freedos-dev&m=99895886029809&w=2 ↩

  23. Paul, Matthias R. (2001-06-10) [1995]. "Format description of DOS, OS/2, and Windows NT .CPI, and Linux .CP files" (CPI.LST file) (1.30 ed.). Archived from the original on 2016-04-20. Retrieved 2016-08-20. http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/MatthiasPaulCPI.zip ↩