Appendix B. Character Set Charts

This appendix contains summaries of two character sets commonly used on PC-compatible machines. The first is for the IBM-850 character set, which is commonly available on Linux terminal utilities like Konsole and GNOME Terminal. The second is the older "Code Page 437" set, which is basically the character set coded into the BIOS ROM of IBM-compatible PCs.

There is one glyph block for each character in each set. Each glyph block includes the following information:

  • The three-digit decimal form of the character number, from 000–255. These are in the upper-right corner of each block.

  • The hexadecimal form of the character number, from 00–FF. These are in the lower-left corner of each block.

  • The character glyph is in the center of the block.

  • For control characters from 0–31, the name of the control character (for example, NAK, DLE, CR, etc.) is printed vertically in the lower-right corner of the block.

Note that the IBM-850 character set is not loaded by default in common Linux terminal utilities, and must be specifically selected from the options or settings menu before the character set will be displayed in the terminal window. For more on this, see the section "Linux and Terminals" in Chapter 6.

ASCII & PC Extended Characters - Code Page 437

Character Set Charts

ASCII & PC Extended Characters - IBM-850

Get Assembly Language Step-by-Step: Programming with Linux®, Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.