How do I remove stray Â without breaking words like Âge?

Only delete an Â that sits right before a character from U+00A0 to U+00BF, since that's where the stray ones land: `re.sub('Â(?=[\u00a0-\u00bf])', '', s)` in Python. That clears Â° and Â£ but leaves Âge and ROMÂNIA alone. It's the fallback for text that mixes good and broken rows, where re-decoding the whole thing isn't an option.

When does Romanian write Â and when Î?

Î at the start and end of a word, Â inside it: înainte and a urî, but câine and pâine. Both letters stand for the same sound, and the split comes from the Romanian Academy's 1993 rule. Compounds keep î where the second part begins, as in neînțeles.

How do I stop ┬ appearing before symbols in cmd?

Switch the console to UTF-8 so it reads the output the way your program wrote it. `chcp 65001` does that for the current window. To make it permanent, tick Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support in Windows' region settings, though that can confuse older programs that expect a legacy code page. Programs that write through the wide-character console API, as Python does, aren't affected at all.

ASCII 194

Uppercase A with circumflexBox T-junction pointing down

ASCII 194 is Â on Windows and ┬ in old DOS.

Â (Capital A with Circumflex) is byte 194 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00C2. It's a real letter, in French words like Âge and Âme, Portuguese names like Ângela and Romanian capitals like ROMÂNIA. It also shows up as debris. C2 is the first UTF-8 byte of every character from U+0080 to U+00BF, which covers the non-breaking space, °, £ and ©, and C2 read as Windows-1252 is Â. That's why a stray Â appears in front of those symbols. The tempting fix, deleting every Â, also wrecks the legitimate ones, so repair the decoding instead. The letter's own UTF-8 form is C3 82, which misreads as Ã‚. The HTML entity is Â.

┬ (Light Down and Horizontal) is byte 194 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+252C. It's the tee on the top edge of a single-line table, where a column divider │ (179) drops down from ─ (196). It's also the console's version of the stray Â. Byte C2 starts every UTF-8 character from U+0080 to U+00BF, and a console using code page 437 draws C2 as ┬. So UTF-8 output containing °, £ or © prints as ┬░, ┬ú and ┬⌐ in cmd: a ┬ in front of a symbol means the program wrote UTF-8 and the console expected 437. In UTF-8 the tee itself is E2 94 AC, and the HTML entity is &boxhd;.

Latin LetterBox Drawing

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 194 is Â.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00C2\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 82 */

    unsigned char b = 194;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 194 0xC2 */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 194 is ┬ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xC2 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(194);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xC2 is -62.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)194;
    unsigned char u = 194;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -62 194 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u252C\n");          /* E2 94 AC */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0194 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00C2 and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+Shift+M.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type c2, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, caret, A.
Phone: Tap Shift, then long-press A and pick Â.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 194 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ┬. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 252C and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings light down and horizontal".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 252c, 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

Only delete an Â that sits right before a character from U+00A0 to U+00BF, since that's where the stray ones land: `re.sub('Â(?=[\u00a0-\u00bf])', '', s)` in Python. That clears Â° and Â£ but leaves Âge and ROMÂNIA alone. It's the fallback for text that mixes good and broken rows, where re-decoding the whole thing isn't an option.
Î at the start and end of a word, Â inside it: înainte and a urî, but câine and pâine. Both letters stand for the same sound, and the split comes from the Romanian Academy's 1993 rule. Compounds keep î where the second part begins, as in neînțeles.
Switch the console to UTF-8 so it reads the output the way your program wrote it. `chcp 65001` does that for the current window. To make it permanent, tick Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support in Windows' region settings, though that can confuse older programs that expect a legacy code page. Programs that write through the wide-character console API, as Python does, aren't affected at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Switch the console to UTF-8 so it reads the output the way your program wrote it. `chcp 65001` does that for the current window. To make it permanent, tick Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support in Windows' region settings, though that can confuse older programs that expect a legacy code page. Programs that write through the wide-character console API, as Python does, aren't affected at all.

ASCII 194

Uppercase A with circumflexBox T-junction pointing down

ASCII 194 is Â on Windows and ┬ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Box Drawing

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 194 is Â.

Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */

printf("\u00C2\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 82 */

unsigned char b = 194; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 194 0xC2 */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 194 is ┬ only on a console using code page 437

(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the

lone byte 0xC2 is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(194);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xC2 is -62.

Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */

char c = (char)194;

unsigned char u = 194;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -62 194 */

/* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */

printf("\u252C\n"); /* E2 94 AC */

return 0;

}