Code page 856 (also known as CP 856 and IBM 00856), is a code page used under DOS for Hebrew.
Like ISO 8859-8, it encodes only letters, not vowel-points or cantillation marks. As non-localized issues of DOS (except for Hebrew MS-DOS a.k.a. HDOS) had no inherent bidirectionality support, Hebrew text encoded using code page 856 was usually stored in visual order; nevertheless, a few DOS applications, notably a word processor named EinsteinWriter, stored Hebrew in logical order.
Code page layout
The following table shows code page 856. Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal code point. Only the second half of the table (code points 128–255) is shown, the first half (code points 0–127) being the same as ASCII; although code points 1–31 and 127 (00–1Fhex and 7Fhex) have a different interpretation in some circumstances – see code page 437.
Code points 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, and 173 (9F, A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, and ADhex) were undefined until 1998 when the new sheqel sign, direction controls, and the euro sign were assigned to them.