A character is a member of a defined set of elements that is used for the control or representation of data. You can usually enter a character with a single keystroke. The coded representation of a character is its representation in digital form. A character, the letter A, for example, differs from its coded representation or encoding. Various coded character sets (such as ASCII and EBCDIC) use different encodings for the letter A (decimal values 65 and 193, respectively). This book uses characters to convey meanings and not to imply a specific character code, except where otherwise stated. The exceptions are certain built-in functions that convert between characters and their representations. The functions C2D, C2X, D2C, X2C, and XRANGE have a dependence on the character set in use.
For information about Double-Byte Character Set characters, see Double-Byte Character Set (DBCS) Support.