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'''Code page''' is the traditional [[International Business Machines|IBM]] term used for a specific character encoding table (a mapping of binary integer values, often 0 through 255, to a specific character or glyph) for [[computer]]s.
Although the basis of many character sets is [[ASCII]], ASCII was a seven bit code, with the 8-bit representation of ASCII typically either setting the top bit to zero or using it as a [[parity bit]]. Using this bit for data doubled the size of the possible character set, allowing another 128 characters to be added. No standard existed for these ‘[[Extended ASCII|extended character sets]]’, and IBM referred to the variants as code pages (as it had always done for variants of EBCDIC encodings).
Although IBM maintained a myriad of code pages, the term has in wider use taken on the meaning character coding for the [[IBM PC]]. Since the original IBM PC code page was not really designed for international use, several incompatible variants emerged:
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