ECS Extended Character Set

ECS Extended Character Set

DOS uses the IBM PC Extended Character Set, or ECS for short. The lower 128 values are the same as the ASCII character set, but values 128-255 map into the European characters differently from other character sets, including that used on Windows.

One odd thing about ECS is that codes 0-31 and 128-159, which are assigned to non-printing control functions such as Return and Line feed, are also assigned special graphics for use in contexts where control functions are not needed. That is how you get happy faces and arrows in ECS displays and line-drawing characters as well as European characters. Here are the graphic symbols for character codes 1 to 31 (normally ^A, the SOH character, through ^_, the US character):

1 = White happy face
2 = Black happy face
3 = Heart
4 = Diamond
5 = Club
6 = Spade
7 = Black bullet
8 = White circle in Black square
9 = Black outline circle
10 = White outline circle
11 = Male
12 = Female
13 = Note
14 = Chord
15 = Sun
16 = Right button
17 = Left button
18 = Up-down arrow
19 = Double exclam
20 = Paragraph
21 = Section
22 = Thick horizontal line
23 = Up-down arrow, down underlined
24 = Up thin arrow
25 = Down thin arrow
26 = Right arrow
27 = Left arrow
28 = Left corner
29 = Circle with line through
30 = Up button
31 = Down button

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