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Lexical Elements of the DEC Text Processing Utility Language
4.3 Character Sets
4.3 Character Sets
When you invoke DECTPU, you can use one of the following keywords with the
/CHARACTER_SET qualifier to specify the character set that you want DECTPU
to use:
• DEC_MCS (for the DEC Multinational Character Set)
• ISO_LATIN1 (for the ISO Latin1 Character Set)
• GENERAL (for other general character sets)
• TPU$CHARACTER_SET (see the DCL help topic for this logical name)
Each character set is an 8-bit character set with 256 characters. Each character
in a set is assigned a decimal equivalent number ranging from 0 to 255. Each
character set uses an extension of the American Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII) character set for the first 128 characters. Table 4–1 shows
the categories into which you can group the ASCII characters.
Table 4–1 Categories of ASCII Character Set Characters
Category Meaning
0–31 Nonprinting characters such as tab, line feed, carriage return, and bell
32 Space
33–64 Special characters such as the ampersand ( & ), question mark ( ? ), equal
sign ( = ), and the numbers 0 through 9
65–122 The uppercase and lowercase letters A through Z and a through z
123–126 Special characters such as the left brace ( { ) and the tilde ( ~ )
127 Delete
The following sections discuss the types of character sets supported by DECTPU.
4.3.1 DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC_MCS)
The DEC Multinational Character Set characters from 128 to 255 are extended
control characters and supplemental multinational characters. Table 4–2 shows
the categories into which you can group the characters.
Table 4–2 Categories of DEC Multinational Character Set Characters
Category Meaning
128–159 Extended control characters
160 Reserved
161–191 Supplemental special graphics characters such as the copyright sign ( © )
and the degree sign (°)
192–254 The supplemental multinational uppercase and lowercase letters such as the
Spanish Ñ and ñ
255 Reserved
For a complete list of characters in the DEC Multinational Character Set, see the
OpenVMS documentation.
4–2 Lexical Elements of the DEC Text Processing Utility Language