charmap(5) File Formats Manual charmap(5)
NAME
charmap - character set description file
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 than <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, com-
ment 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.
STANDARDS
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)
Linux man-pages 6.7 2023-10-31 charmap(5)
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