Single-byte Character Sets
A single-byte character set (SBCS) is a mapping of 256 individual characters to their identifying code values, implemented as a code page. An SBCS can correspond either to a Windows code page or an OEM code page. An SBCS code page can also include a non-native code page, for example, an EBCDIC code page. For definitions of these code pages, see Code Pages.
Note
New Windows applications should use Unicode to avoid the inconsistencies of varied code pages and for ease of localization. However, some legacy protocols require the use of an SBCS. Each SBCS code page supports different characters, but no page supports the full breadth of characters provided by Unicode. Each SBCS code page supports a different subset, differently encoded. Data converted from one SBCS code page to another is subject to corruption, because the same data value on different code pages can encode a different character. Data converted from Unicode to SBCS is subject to data loss because a given code page might not be able to represent every character used in that particular Unicode data.
Your applications use SBCS Windows code pages with the "A" versions of Windows functions. See Conventions for Function Prototypes and Code Pages. To help identify an SBCS code page, an application can use the GetCPInfo or GetCPInfoEx function. In addition, an application can use the MultiByteToWideChar and WideCharToMultiByte functions to map between Unicode and SBCS strings.
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