Re: Vertical bar character

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 06 Dec 1997 11:03:59

At 11:38 05/12/97 -0000, Michael Kay wrote:
>>I am building a module to parse DTD content models and have a strange (to
>>me) problem on java DOS with the vertical bar character in the command
>>line. I am using W95, JDK1.02 and the DOS prompt window.
>
>
>Unicode and Latin-1 have:
>VERTICAL BAR: 124
>BROKEN BAR: 166
>
>I believe that in the original ASCII, 124 was called vertical line, but many
>printers
>displayed it as a broken line. In the IBM PC-DOS code set 850, code 124
>became
>broken line, while in Latin-1 it remained as vertical bar with the new code
>166
>(your minus 90) being allocated to broken bar.

Thanks. This helps a good deal. I'm mystified as to why 166 (aka 'Broken
bar') is displayed as a minute formless squiggle and 214 is displayed as a
broken bar but I can survive without that knowledge
>
>This means that software that is converting files between Latin-1 (or
>UNICODE, or
>Microsoft "ANSI") and PC-DOS code page 850 ought to perform a conversion on
>these characters.

Yes. It performs an unwanted one :-). It looks like a problem between Java
and the DOS commandline. What particularly worried me was that simple Java
code using 'char' translated this character into 65446, which presumably
has a completely different meaning in Unicode. IOW there is a danger that
corruptions could take place.

P.

>
>Mike Kay
>
>
>
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Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
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