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{{For|the tertiary level school in Trinidad and Tobago|School of Business and Computer Science}}
'''SBCS''', or '''single-byte character set''', is used to refer to [[character encoding]]s that use exactly one [[byte]] for each [[graphic character]]. An SBCS can accommodate a maximum of 256 symbols, and is useful for scripts that do not have many symbols or accented letters such as the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts used mainly for European languages. Examples of SBCS [[character encoding|encodings]] include [[ISO/IEC 646]], the various [[ISO 8859]] encodings, and the various [[Microsoft]]/[[IBM]] [[code page]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd374056(v=vs.85).aspx|title=Single-byte Character Sets|publisher=Microsoft|access-date=2017-04-17}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url = https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSAL2T_8.2.0/com.ibm.cics.tx.doc/concepts/c_sbcs_dbcs_mbcs_data_cnvrsn.html | title = SBCS, DBCS, and MBCS data conversion considerations | date = 14 September 2015 | publisher = IBM | access-date = 2017-04-17 }}</ref>

The term SBCS is commonly contrasted against the terms [[double-byte character set|DBCS]] (double-byte character set) and [[triple-byte character set|TBCS]] (triple-byte character set), as well as [[multi-byte character set|MBCS]] (multi-byte character set).  The multi-byte character sets are used to accommodate languages with scripts that have large numbers of characters and symbols, predominantly Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. These are sometimes referred to by the acronym [[CJK characters|CJK]]. In these computing systems, SBCSs are traditionally associated with [[halfwidth form|half-width]] characters, so-called because such SBCS characters would traditionally occupy half the width of a DBCS character on a fixed-width [[computer terminal]] or [[text mode|text screen]].

==In modern times==
Though single-byte character sets have largely been supplanted by [[UTF-8]] and its variants on modern systems,<ref>{{Cite web | url = https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/en-utf8 | title = Usage statistics of UTF-8 for websites | publisher = w3techs.com | access-date = 2024-09-09 }}</ref> they have found a niche in [[code golf]]ing, where the smaller byte size of characters allows participants to gain an edge if they use SBCSs with specially designed [[programming language]]s such as [[Vyxal]]<ref>{{Cite web | url = https://github.com/Vyxal/Vyxal/blob/version-3/README.md#whats-the-same-as-version-2 | title = Vyxal language README | date = 4 September 2024 | publisher = Github | access-date = 2024-09-09 }}</ref> and [[GolfScript]].

==See also==
* [[double-byte character set|DBCS]]
* [[triple-byte character set|TBCS]]
* [[multi-byte character set|MBCS]]
* [[Variable-width encoding]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Character encoding}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sbcs}}

[[Category:Character encoding]]


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