13.1. Introduction to Characters sec

13.1. Introduction to Characters sec_13-1
Prev	Chapter 13. Characters chap-13	Next

13.1. Introduction to Characters [sec_13-1]

CHAR-CODE takes values from 0 (inclusive) to CHAR-CODE-LIMIT (exclusive), i.e., the implementation supports exactly CHAR-CODE-LIMIT characters.

Table 13.1. Number of characters

binaries built	without UNICODE support	with UNICODE support
`CHAR-CODE-LIMIT`	2⁸ = 256	17 * 2¹⁶ = 1114112

The types EXT:STRING-CHAR and BASE-CHAR are equivalent to CHARACTER. EXT:STRING-CHAR used to be available as STRING-CHAR prior to removal from [ANSI CL standard] by CHARACTER-PROPOSAL:2.

(EXT:CHAR-WIDTH char) returns the number of screen columns occupied by char. The value is

0: for non-spacing characters (such as control characters and many combining characters);
2: for double-width East Asian characters;
1: for all other characters.