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📛 NAME

charmap - character set description file

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
📋 View available charmap names	locale -m	List all installed character map names
🔧 Compile a locale with a specific charmap	localedef -f charmap -i locale locale_name	Create locale variant using a character map file
📄 Inspect a charmap file	head /usr/share/i18n/charmaps/UTF-8	View the header and first characters of a charmap
🔍 Convert file encoding using iconv	iconv -f from_charmap -t to_charmap file	Convert file contents between character sets

📖 DESCRIPTION

A character set description (charmap) defines all available characters and their encodings in a character set. localedef(1) can use charmaps to create locale variants for different character sets.

📐 Syntax

The charmap file starts with a header that may consist of the following keywords:

• <code_set_name> — followed by the name of the character map.
• <comment_char> — followed by a character that will be used as the comment character for the rest of the file. It defaults to the number sign (#).
• <escape_char> — followed by a character that should be used as the escape character for the rest of the file to mark characters that should be interpreted in a special way. It defaults to the backslash (\).
• <mb_cur_max> — followed by the maximum number of bytes for a character. The default value is 1.
• <mb_cur_min> — followed by the minimum number of bytes for a character. This value must be less than or equal to <mb_cur_max>. If not specified, it defaults to <mb_cur_max>.

The character set definition section starts with the keyword CHARMAP in the first column.

The following lines may have one of the two following forms to define the character set:

• <character> byte-sequence comment — This form defines exactly one character and its byte sequence, comment being optional.
• <character>..<character> byte-sequence comment — This form defines a character range and its byte sequence, comment being optional.

The character set definition section ends with the string END CHARMAP.

The character set definition section may optionally be followed by a section to define widths of characters.

The WIDTH_DEFAULT keyword can be used to define the default width for all characters not explicitly listed. The default character width is 1.

The width section for individual characters starts with the keyword WIDTH in the first column.

The following lines may have one of the two following forms to define the widths of the characters:

• <character> width — This form defines the width of exactly one character.
• <character>...<character> width — This form defines the width for all the characters in the range.

The width definition section ends with the string END WIDTH.

📁 FILES

• /usr/share/i18n/charmaps — Usual default character map path.

📜 CONFORMING TO

POSIX.2.

💡 EXAMPLES

The Euro sign is defined as follows in the UTF-8 charmap:

<U20AC>     /xe2/x82/xac EURO SIGN

🔗 SEE ALSO

iconv(1), locale(1), localedef(1), locale(5), charsets(7)

📝 COLOPHON

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📛 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📖 DESCRIPTION 📁 FILES 📜 CONFORMING TO 💡 EXAMPLES 🔗 SEE ALSO 📝 COLOPHON