Windows code pages, what are they?
- by Mike D
I'm trying to gain a basic understanding of what is meant by a Windows code page.  I kind of get the feeling it's a translation between a given 8 bit value and some 'abstraction' for a given character graphic.
I made the following experiment.  I created a "" character literal with two versions of the letter u with an umlaut.  One created using the ALT 129 (uses code page 437) value and one using the ALT 0252 (uses code page 1252) value.  When I examined the literal both characters had the value 252.
Is 252 the universal 8 bit abstraction for u with an umlaut?  Is it the Unicode value?
Aside from keyboard input are there any library routines or system calls that use code pages?
For example is there a function to translate a string using a given code table (as above for the ALT 129 value)?