Single-byte character set

{{Short description|Character encoding using one byte per character}} {{Redirect|SBCS|the tertiary level school in Trinidad and Tobago|School of Business and Computer Science}} {{Use American English|date=August 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=August 2025}} A '''single-byte character set''' (SBCS) is a character encoding that uses exactly one byte for each graphic character. A{{nbsp}}{{abbr|SBCS|single-byte character set}} can accommodate a maximum of 256{{nbsp}}symbols, and is useful for scripts that do not have many symbols or accented letters, such as the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts used mainly for European languages. Examples of {{abbr|SBCS|single-byte character set}} encodings include ISO/IEC{{nbsp}}646, the various ISO{{nbsp}}8859 encodings, and the various Microsoft/IBM code pages.{{zwj}}<ref>{{Cite web | author = Microsoft | url = https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/intl/single-byte-character-sets | title = Single-byte Character Sets | date = 7 January 2021 | orig-date = First published c. 2011 | website = Microsoft Learn | publisher = self-published | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20221022054905/learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/intl/single-byte-character-sets | archive-date = 2022-10-22 | url-status = live }}</ref>{{zwj}}<ref>{{Cite book | author = IBM | url = https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/txseries/8.2.0?topic=conversion-sbcs-dbcs-mbcs-data-considerations | section = Product overview | at = SBCS, DBCS, and MBCS data conversion considerations | title = TXSeries for Multiplatforms Documentation | version = 8.2.0 | date = 19 April 2021 | orig-date = Originally published 2015 | publisher = self-published | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20250827064825/https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/txseries/8.2.0?topic=conversion-sbcs-dbcs-mbcs-data-considerations | archive-date = 2025-08-27 | url-status = live }}</ref>

Single-byte character sets are contrasted against double-byte and triple-byte character sets as well as multi-byte character sets. Multi-byte character sets are used to accommodate languages with scripts that have large numbers of characters and symbols, predominantly Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (sometimes referred to as "CJK"). In these character encodings, {{abbr|SBCS|single-byte character sets}} are traditionally associated with half-width characters, so-called because such single-byte characters would traditionally occupy half the width of a double-byte character on a computer terminal screen which used a duospaced font.

== Modern use == Though single-byte character sets have largely been supplanted by Unicode encodings in modern systems,{{zwj}}<ref>{{Cite web | author =  | url = https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/en-utf8 | title = Usage Statistics and Market Share of UTF-8 for Websites | website = W3Techs | publisher = Q-Success | date = 2025-08-27 | orig-date = First published 2009 | archive-url = https://archive.today/20250827063230/https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/en-utf8 | archive-date = 2025-08-27 | url-status = live }}</ref> they have found a niche in code golfing, where the smaller size of characters allows participants to gain an edge if they use {{abbr|SBCS|single-byte character sets}} with programming languages which facilitate their use for increased code compactness, such as Vyxal{{zwj}}<ref>{{Cite web | url = https://github.com/Vyxal/Vyxal/blob/d5bc7d56e238cb6b13eec7721053e41913ea08f6/README.md#whats-the-same-as-version-2 | title = Vyxal language README | date = 30 December 2024 | website = GitHub | publisher = self-published | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250827061836/https://github.com/Vyxal/Vyxal/blob/d5bc7d56e238cb6b13eec7721053e41913ea08f6/README.md | archive-date=2025-08-27 | url-status=live }}</ref> and GolfScript.

== References == {{Reflist}}

Category:Character encoding