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📛 NAME

charmap - character set description file

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Define a single character	<character> <byte-sequence> [comment]	Map a single character to its byte sequence, optional comment
Define a character range	<character>..<character> <byte-sequence> [comment]	Map a contiguous range of characters to sequential byte sequences
Set comment character	<comment_char> <char>	Set the character used for comments (default #)
Set escape character	<escape_char> <char>	Set the escape character for special interpretation (default \)
Set maximum bytes per character	<mb_cur_max> <number>	Maximum length of a multi-byte character (default 1)
Set minimum bytes per character	<mb_cur_min> <number>	Minimum length, ≤ <mb_cur_max> (defaults to max)
Set default character width	WIDTH_DEFAULT <width>	Default width for all characters not explicitly listed (default 1)
Define width for a single character	<character> <width>	Width of exactly one character
Define width for a character range	<character>...<character> <width>	Width for all characters in the range
End character set definition	END CHARMAP	Terminates the CHARMAP section
End width definition	END WIDTH	Terminates the WIDTH section

📖 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>
📛 is followed by the name of the character map.

<comment_char>
💬 is 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>
↩️ is 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>
🔢 is followed by the maximum number of bytes for a character. The default value is 1.

<mb_cur_min>
🔽 is 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