Microsoft DOS chcp command

Quick links

About chcp
Availability
Country and Regions
Code pages
Syntax
Examples
How to load

About chcp

Before the chcp command can be used, the nlsfunc must be loaded, as well as the country.sys must be loaded into the config.sys.

The chcp command is used to supplement the International keyboard and character set information, allowing MS-DOS to be used in other countries and with different languages.

Availability

The chcp.com command is an external command that is available in the below Microsoft operating systems.

MS-DOS 6.22 and above
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7

Country and Regions

Keybrd2.sys Country/Regions
274, 275 - Brazil
442 - Bulgaria
319 - Greece
161 - Iceland
118 - Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro
333 - Romania
441 - Russian
440, 179 - Turkish

Code pages

EGA.CPI Codepages
437 - United States
850 - Multilingual (Latin I)
852 - Slavic/Eastern European
860 - Portuguese
863 - Canadian-French
865 - Nordic

EGA2.CPI Codepages
737 - Greek II
850 - Multilingual (Latin I)
852 - Slavic/Eastern European
857 - Turkish
861 - Greek

EGA3.CPI Codepages
437 - United States
850 - Multilingual (Latin I)
852 - Slavic/Eastern European
855 - Cyrillic I
866 - Russian (Cyrillic II)

Syntax

Displays or sets the active code page number.

CHCP [nnn]

  nnn   Specifies a code page number.

Type CHCP without a parameter to display the active code page number.

Examples

chcp

Display the page number.

chcp 447

Sets the active page to 447.

How to load

Note: If you are using MS-DOS, you would want to substitute c:\windows\command with c:\dos in the below examples.

Autoexec.bat

country=354,861; c:\windows\command.country.sys
Device=c:\windows\command\display.sys con=(,,2)

Config.sys

mode con cp prepare=((861 850) c:\windows\command\ega2.cpi)
mode con cp select=861
keyb is,,c:\windows\command\keybrd2.sys