Character sets and encodings

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Basic character set

The basic character set consists of the following 95 characters:

Code unit Character Glyph
U+0009 Character tabulation
U+000B Line tabulation
U+000C Form feed (FF)
U+0020 Space
U+0021 Exclamation mark !
U+0022 Quotation mark "
U+0023 Number sign #
U+0025 Percent sign %
U+0026 Ampersand &
U+0027 Apostrophe '
U+0028 Left parenthesis (
U+0029 Right parenthesis )
U+002A Asterisk *
U+002B Plus sign +
U+002C Comma ,
U+002D Hyphen-minus -
U+002E Full stop .
U+002F Solidus /
U+0030 .. U+0039 Digit zero .. nine 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
U+003A Colon :
U+003B Semicolon ;
U+003C Less-than sign <
U+003D Equals sign =
U+003E Greater-than sign >
U+003F Question mark ?
U+0041 .. U+005A Latin capital letter A .. Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M

N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

U+005B Left square bracket [
U+005C Reverse solidus \
U+005D Right square bracket ]
U+005E Circumflex accent ^
U+005F Low line _
U+0061 .. U+007A Latin small letter a .. z a b c d e f g h i j k l m

n o p q r s t u v w x y z

U+007B Left curly bracket {
U+007C Vertical line |
U+007D Right curly bracket }
U+007E Tilde ~

Unlike C++, the U+000A LINE FEED (LF) character is not included in basic character set. Instead, there shall be some way of indicating the end of each line of text in the source file and the document treats such an end-of-line indicator as if it were a single new-line character.

Basic character set is also known as basic source character set.

Basic execution character set

The basic execution character set contains all the members of the basic character set, plus the following characters:

Code unit Character
U+0000 Null
U+0007 Bell
U+0008 Backspace
U+000A Line feed (LF)
U+000D Carriage return (CR)

For each basic execution character set, the values of the members shall be non-negative and distinct from one another. In both the source and execution basic character sets, the value of each character after 0 in the above list of decimal digits shall be one greater than the value of the previous. The U+0000 NULL character has the value 0.

The representation of each member of the basic execution character sets fit in a byte.

In C++, basic execution character set is also known as basic literal character set and basic execution wide-character set.

Literal encodings

The literal encoding is an implementation-defined mapping of the characters of the execution character set to the values in a character constant or string literal without encoding prefix. It supports a mapping from all the basic execution character set values into the implementation-defined encoding. It may contain multibyte character sequences.

The following characters are not in basic execution character set, but they are required to be encoded as a single byte in an ordinary character constant or ordinary string literal.

Code unit Character Glyph
U+0024 Dollar Sign $
U+0040 Commercial At @
U+0060 Grave Accent `
(since C23)

The wide literal encoding is an implementation-defined mapping of the characters of the execution character set to the values in an L-prefixed character constant or string literal. It supports a mapping from all the basic execution character set values into the implementation-defined encoding. If an implementation does not define __STDC_MB_MIGHT_NEQ_WC__, the mapping produces values identical to the literal encoding for all the basic execution character set values. One or more values may map to one or more values of the extended execution character set.

The UTF-8 encoding is used for mapping characters of the execution character set to a u8-prefixed character constant or (since C23) string literal.

An implementation-defined encoding (until C23)The UTF-16 encoding (since C23) is used for mapping characters of the execution character set to a u-prefixed character constant or string literal.

An implementation-defined encoding (until C23)The UTF-32 encoding (since C23) is used for mapping characters of the execution character set to a U-prefixed character constant or string literal.

(since C11)

See also

ASCII chart