Code page

Common card · No. 428177

In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of (identifiers for) printable and non-printable characters with unique numbers ("code points"). Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some contexts these terms are used more precisely; see Character encoding § Terminology.) The term "code page" originated from IBM's EBCDIC-based mainframe systems, but Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle Corporation are among the vendors that use this term. The majority of vendors identify their own character sets by a name. In the case when there is a plethora of character sets (like in IBM), identifying character sets through a number is a convenient way to distinguish them. Originally, the code page numbers referred to the page numbers in the IBM standard character set manual, a condition which has not held for a long time. Vendors that use a code page system allocate their own code page number to a character encoding, even if...

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