Every character on a computer keyboard corresponds to a numeric code. For example, the letter A corresponds to the character code 65. A character set is a set of characters that appear on a computer, and a set of numeric codes that correspond to those characters.
Different character sets are used in different countries. For example, in the version of Windows for North America and Western Europe, character code 176 corresponds to a degrees symbol; however, if Windows is configured to use a different character set, character code 176 may represent a different character. For information about working with international character sets, see Platform-Specific and International Character Sets in the MapBasic User Guide.
If your program needs to read an existing file that contains special characters, and if the file was created in a character set that does not match the character set in use when you run your program, your program should use the CharSet clause. The CharSet clause should indicate what character set was in use when the file was created.
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