DBCS

Double Byte Character Set (DBCS ) refers to a character set that uses exactly two bytes to represent all characters. This provides a means of presentation for a maximum of 65,536 different characters. In contrast, character sets that require only one byte per character, also known as Single Byte Character Set ( SBCS).

The term DBCS has undergone a transformation of its meaning over time. While he now referred to a character set that uses exactly two bytes per character, he was formerly a font called that uses a variable number of bytes per character. Such fonts are now referred to as multibyte character sets (MBCS ).

UTF -16 is often referred to as DBCS, but encoded characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane with four bytes and is therefore an MBCS.