| the numbers, letters, punctuation marks, and special symbols that can be used by a particular device, as a printer, or in a coding method, as ASCII. |
character set character
1. A particular mapping between characters and byte strings, i.e. the combination of a particular character encoding (which maps between byte strings and integers) and a particular coded character set (which maps between integers and characters).
For example: ASCII (the ASCII coded character set, encoded directly as single-byte values), or UTF-8 (the Unicode coded character set, encoded with an 8-bit transformation method).
2. Occasionally: a character repertoire; or a coded character set.
(1998-12-17)