According to this site, ASCII extended character codes 176, 177 and 178 correspond to three characters consisting in different shades of rectangles:

Here in more detail, character 178:

Now, according to , I should be able to escape any ASCII character with a code below 256 with, for example, its hex escape sequence. So, 176 would be \xB0 in hex. But instead of getting the expected character as described above, I get "degree symbol" '°'. Degree symbol is ASCII 248, not 176, so.... what am I doing wrong?

According to this site, ASCII extended character codes 176, 177 and 178 correspond to three characters consisting in different shades of rectangles:

Here in more detail, character 178:

Now, according to https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-escapes, I should be able to escape any ASCII character with a code below 256 with, for example, its hex escape sequence. So, 176 would be \xB0 in hex. But instead of getting the expected character as described above, I get "degree symbol" '°'. Degree symbol is ASCII 248, not 176, so.... what am I doing wrong?

• javascript
• node.js
• string
• terminal
• extended-ascii

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jul 2, 2017 at 21:55 jotadepicas asked Jul 2, 2017 at 21:43 jotadepicasjotadepicas 2,50333 gold badges2929 silver badges4848 bronze badges 1

• The key point is "IBM developed an extension of 8-bit ASCII code, called "code page 437"". It's one of many extensions. kunststube/encoding – Bergi Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 22:04

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2 Answers 2

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

JavaScript uses Unicode, rather than extended ASCII. You can find the Unicode equivalent of the ASCII symbols by using String.prototype.charCodeAt(), and then output them with String.prototype.fromCharCode():

console.log("░".charCodeAt(0)); // 9617
console.log("▒".charCodeAt(0)); // 9618
console.log("▓".charCodeAt(0)); // 9619

console.log(String.fromCharCode(9617)); // ░
console.log(String.fromCharCode(9618)); // ▒
console.log(String.fromCharCode(9619)); // ▓

Hope this helps! :)

JavaScript deals in Unicode, not Extended ASCII.

U+00B0 is the degree symbol

Block elements hold positions 2580 to 259F

console.log("\u2592");