American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII defines 128 characters, including control characters and graphic characters, represented by 7-bit binary values (see also ISO 646).
See also character set, coded character set
The standard, or default, language environment. This environment is always in effect for non-internationalized applications or when locales are not installed or are not active.
A sequence of one or more bytes that represents a single graphic
symbol or control code.
Unlike the
char
datatype in C,
a character can be represented by a value that is one byte or multiple bytes.
The expression
"multibyte character"
and the term
"character"
both refer to character values of any length, including single-byte
values.
See also wide character
A member of a set of elements used for the organization, control, or representation of text.
A contiguous sequence of bytes that is terminated by, and
includes, the null byte.
A string is an array of type
char
in the C programming language.
The null byte has all bits set to zero (0).
An empty string is a character string whose first element is the null byte.
See also character, wide-character string
A set of unambiguous rules that establishes a character set and the one-to-one relationship between each character of the set and its bit representation. On UNIX systems, the more common term is codeset. On MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows systems, the more common term is code page.
The ordering rules applied to characters or groups of characters when they are sorted.
A character, other than a graphic character, that affects the recording, processing, transmission, or interpretation of text.
The conventions of a geographical area for such things as date, time, numeric, and currency values.
Information generated internally, information extracted from or written to files, and message text used for communication with the program's user.
The operating system supports two types of locales; dense code and Unicode. Dense code locales use a wide-character encoding that minimizes table size by assigning codepoints consecutively with no empty positions. Under dense code locales, a wchar_t value for one locale may not represent the same character in another locale and, thus, is locale specific.
See also Unicode
The currency adopted by European countries belonging to the
Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and scheduled to replace local currencies
for EMU member countries in the year 2002.
The euro currency has a monetary
sign that looks like an equal sign (=) superimposed on the capital letter
C and is identified by the string
EUR
in international
currency documents.
The encoding format that applies to data outside the program.
Contrast with process code
A character, other than a control character, that has a visual representation when handwritten, printed, or displayed. Also, ideograph.
The process of developing programs without prior knowledge of the language, cultural data, or character-encoding schemes that the programs are expected to handle. An internationalized program uses a set of interfaces that allows the program to modify its behavior at run time for operation in a specific native language environment. I18N is frequently used as an abbreviation for internationalization.
See also locale, localization
The ISO Universal Character Set (UCS). The first 65,536 code positions in this character set are called the Base Multilingual Plane (BMP), in which each character is 16 bits in length. This form of ISO 10646 is also known as UCS-2. ISO 10646 also has a form called UCS-4, in which each character is 32 bits in length.
See also Unicode
ISO 7-bit codeset for information interchange. The reference version of ISO 646 contains 95 graphic characters, which are identical to the graphic characters defined in the ASCII codeset.
ISO 7-bit or 8-bit codeset for text communication using public communication networks, private communication networks, or interchange media such as magnetic tapes and disks.
ISO 8-bit single-byte codesets. The asterisk (*) represents a number indicating the part of the associated ISO standard. For example, the ISO8859-1 codeset conforms to ISO 8859 Part 1, Latin Alphabet No. 1, which defines 191 graphic characters covering the requirements of most Western European languages.
See localization
A collection of information associated with the numeric, monetary, date and time, and messaging parts of a locale.
See native language
A set of data and rules that supports a particular combination of native (local) language, cultural data, and codeset. Also called language table.
See also coded character set, cultural data, langinfo database, localization
The process of providing language- or culture-specific information for computer systems. Some of these requirements are addressed by locales. Other requirements are addressed by translations of program messages, provision of appropriate fonts for printers and display devices, and, in some cases, development of additional software. L10N is sometimes used as an abbreviation for localization.
See also internationalization, locale
A file or storage area external to the program code that contains program messages, command prompts, and responses to prompts for a particular native language, territory, and codeset.
See character
A computer user's spoken or written language, such as English, French, Japanese, or Thai.
The encoding format used for manipulating data inside programs.
Contrast with file code
The character that separates the integer part of a number from the fractional part.
The high bit of the value in the small data type is used to
fill in bits that remain when the value is converted to the larger data type
for comparison.
For example, if
s[0]
is the value 0x8e,
sign extension would cause it to be treated as 0xffffff8e.
See character string
The geographic area, usually defined by a political entity such as nation or state, with particular cultural differences that must be accommodated in localization; for example, the currency or language of a territory.
See ISO 10646
A standard that defines encoding for characters in most native languages. The Unicode standard specifies a Universal Character Set (UCS) and defines many thousands of characters, including a private use area for vendor defined characters. "Unicode" originally referred to encoding that was limited to the UCS-2 (16-bit) encoding defined by the ISO 10646 standard. The Unicode standard now encompasses UCS-4 (32-bit) encoding and defines a number of universal transformation formats (UTFs) for use with byte-oriented protocols that process data files.
See also coded character set, ISO 10646
See ISO 10646
An integral type that is large enough to hold any member of
the extended execution character set.
In program terms, a wide character is
an object of type
wchar_t, which is defined in the
/usr/include/stddef.h
(for conformance to X/Open specifications)
and
/usr/include/stdlib.h
(for conformance to the ANSI
C standard) header files.
Although the file locations where the
wchar_t
data type is defined are determined by standards organizations,
its definition is implementation specific.
For example, implementations that
support only single-byte codesets might define
wchar_t
as a byte value.
On Tru64 UNIX systems,
wchar_t
is a
4-byte (32-bit) value.
The null wide character is a
wchar_t
value with all
bits set to zero (0).
A contiguous sequence of wide characters that is terminated
by and includes the null wide character.
A wide-character string is an array
of type
wchar_t.
See also character string, wide character
Functions that allow programmers to create applications that support
single-byte or multibyte codesets. WPI functions are similar to the C language interface, but WPI uses wide characters.