Code page is another name for character encoding. It consists of a table of values that describes the character set for a particular language.
Character encoding is the process of encoding a collection of characters according to an encoding system. This process normally pairs numbers with characters to encode information that can be used by a computer.
Due to computers only being able to interpret raw zero’s and one’s (ex. 01100110), words and sentences need to be encoded when inputting information to a computer. The characters within these words and sentences are grouped into a character set that the computer can recognize.
Character encodings allow us to understand the encoding that is taking place with computers. Due to there being a variety of character encodings, errors can spring up when encoded with one character encoding and decoding with another. The above tool can be used to simulate if any errors will come up when encoding with any character encoding and decoding with another.
There is a wide variety of encodings that can be used to encode or decode a string of characters, including UTF-8, ASCII, and ISO 9959-1.
While these are certainly popular encodings that are used, there are times when strings of code are encoded with encodings that aren’t as widely used, such as x-IA5-Norgwegian or DOS-720. This can cause confusion and possible errors, so it’s important to understand how to reduce these errors by simulating beforehand using String Functions’ character encoding/decoding tool.
To use String Functions’ character encoding/decoding tool, start by entering a string of characters in the text box. Then, select which encoding and decoding system you would like to use to simulate from the drop-down menus.
To view encoding tables from one encoding to another, use our character encoding table index.