ASCII 131
Florin signLowercase a with circumflex
ASCII 131 is ƒ on Windows and â in old DOS.
ƒ (Florin Sign) is byte 131 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+0192. It's a small f with a descender hook. The Dutch guilder used it as its currency symbol and the Aruban florin still does, and math and design texts use it for function notation, ƒ(x). The Ewe language of Ghana and Togo writes it as an ordinary letter. It's a separate character, not a styled f, so search and code treat ƒ(x) and f(x) as different text. Mangled UTF-8 turns it into Æ’, from its bytes C6 92. Old DOS had ƒ too, at 159. The HTML entity is ƒ.
â (Small A with Circumflex) is byte 131 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+00E2. Windows-1252 has the florin sign ƒ at 131, so French DOS text read as Windows-1252 turns gâteau into gƒteau and château into chƒteau. Code page 850 kept â at 131 too.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 131 is ƒ.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u0192\n"); /* UTF-8: C6 92 */unsigned char b = 131; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 131 0x83 */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 131 is â only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0x83 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(131);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0x83 is -125.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)131;unsigned char u = 131;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -125 131 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u00E2\n"); /* C3 A2 */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0131 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. Alt+159, without the zero, types it too. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 0192 and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Option+F.
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 192, then Space.
- Phone
- Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 131 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts â.
â is also ASCII 226 on Windows, which has the full guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
It's how Chrome's DevTools labels a function value, so logging a function shows ƒ greet(name) instead of dumping its source. The ƒ isn't part of your code. Paste it back into a script and you get a syntax error, because JavaScript reads ƒ as an ordinary variable name, not a keyword.
It's the f-number: the lens's focal length divided by the width of its opening, so at ƒ/2.8 the opening is the focal length divided by 2.8. Smaller numbers mean a wider opening and more light. The hooked ƒ is only the traditional way to print it, and plain f/2.8 is the same setting.
The Aruban florin, written ƒ or Afl. The Dutch guilder used ƒ until the euro replaced it in 2002, and the Netherlands Antillean guilder, shown as NAƒ, gave way to the Caribbean guilder in 2025. So a modern price with ƒ is almost always Aruban, and an older one is probably Dutch.
Not really. The forte mark is an f drawn in a heavy, curly italic, and ƒ only resembles it. Unicode has a dedicated 𝆑 (U+1D191) for music software, but few text fonts include it. In running text about music, an italic f is the usual choice.
ISO-8859-1 has no ƒ, so iconv -t ISO-8859-1 stops with an error at it, whether the file came from Windows-1252 or from code page 437. Converting to Windows-1252 or UTF-8 goes through.
The text was saved under DOS, where â is byte 131, and is being read as Windows-1252, which puts ƒ there. Its neighbors break the same way, with ê turning into ˆ and ô into “, so check the rest of the file before fixing single words. In Vim, `:e ++enc=cp850` reloads it with the right encoding.
Frequently Asked Questions
The text was saved under DOS, where â is byte 131, and is being read as Windows-1252, which puts ƒ there. Its neighbors break the same way, with ê turning into ˆ and ô into “, so check the rest of the file before fixing single words. In Vim, `:e ++enc=cp850` reloads it with the right encoding.