ASCII 190
Three quartersBox bottom-right corner, double horizontal
ASCII 190 is ¾ on Windows and ╛ in old DOS.
¾ (Three Quarters) is byte 190 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00BE. It's the last of the three fractions Windows-1252 carries, used for things like ¾ sleeves or a ¾ inch pipe, and old DOS never had it. If ¾ appears in the middle of a word, it isn't a fraction at all but a broken ž. Czech, Slovak or Slovenian text saved as ISO-8859-2 stores ž as 0xBE, which Windows-1252 displays as ¾, so muž shows up as mu¾. With an Å in front of it, as in muž, the source was UTF-8 instead. Reading the file with the right encoding fixes both. In UTF-8 the fraction itself is C2 BE, and the HTML entity is ¾.
╛ (Single Up, Double Left) is byte 190 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+255B. It's the bottom-right corner of a box with double top and bottom edges and single sides: ═ (205) comes in from the left and │ (179) comes down from above. On a web page, frames like this can show gaps between rows, because each vertical stroke only spans its own line box. Keep line-height close to 1 on the pre element that holds the frame. Code page 850 put ¥ on this byte. In UTF-8 it's E2 95 9B, and the HTML entity is ╛.
Technical Details
Technical Details
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 190 is ¾.Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */printf("\u00BE\n"); /* UTF-8: C2 BE */unsigned char b = 190; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 190 0xBE */return 0;}
Code Example
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#include <stdio.h>int main(void) {/* Byte 190 is ╛ only on a console using code page 437(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal thelone byte 0xBE is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */putchar(190);/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xBE is -66.Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */char c = (char)190;unsigned char u = 190;printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -66 190 *//* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */printf("\u255B\n"); /* E2 95 9B */return 0;}
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 0190 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00BE and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "vulgar fraction three quarters".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type be, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, 3, 4.
- Phone
- Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
How to Type It
- Windows
- Hold Alt and type 190 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. US PCs insert ╛, but PCs set to code page 850, common in Western Europe, insert ¥. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 255B and press Alt+X.
- Mac
- Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings up single and left double".
- Linux
- In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 255b, then Space.
- Phone
- Phone keyboards have no key for it. Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.
Frequently Asked Questions
The text is Windows-1250, the Central European Windows code page, which stores ľ as 0xBE, and it's being read as Windows-1252, where 0xBE is ¾. So the letter a stray ¾ replaces tells you the source: ľ points to Windows-1250, ž to ISO-8859-2. Decode with the matching table, `cp1250` or `iso-8859-2` in Python, and save the result as UTF-8.
Use two ranges, because the fractions live in two places: `[¼-¾⅐-⅞]`. ¼, ½ and ¾ sit together in Latin-1 at U+00BC to U+00BE, and the rest, from ⅐ to ⅞, are in the Number Forms block at U+2150 to U+215E. Skip \p{No} for this, since it also matches superscripts and circled digits.
Alt codes without a leading zero read your PC's DOS code page, where 190 is the box corner ╛ on a US setup and ¥ on a Western European one. Alt+0190 gives ¾ on both. Code page 850 keeps ¾ at 243, so Alt+243 works on Western European PCs, but on a US one the same code types ≤.
Frequently Asked Questions
Alt codes without a leading zero read your PC's DOS code page, where 190 is the box corner ╛ on a US setup and ¥ on a Western European one. Alt+0190 gives ¾ on both. Code page 850 keeps ¾ at 243, so Alt+243 works on Western European PCs, but on a US one the same code types ≤.