Alt0162

Alt0162 is the decimal code for the cent sign (¢) in Microsoft Windows. By holding the Alt key and typing 0162 on the numeric keypad, users can insert the symbol into text fields, documents, and applications that accept Unicode or legacy character sets. The cent sign represents the old British monetary unit, the old British pound subdivided into 100 cents, and remains in use in various financial, electronic, and academic contexts, notably in the United States where the cent is a unit of currency.

Historically, Alt codes were introduced with Windows 3.0 and remain supported across modern versions of Windows, macOS (via Option + 3), Linux, and other operating systems, though other input methods such as Unicode point U+00A2 or the Latin-1 supplement also provide alternatives. The cent sign is encoded in ISO‑8859‑1 and Unicode, with code point U+00A2. It belongs to the Latin‑1 supplement block and is used in HTML as ¢ or ¢.

The code 0162 derives from the Windows Code Page 1252 representation of the cent sign. The leading zero is required on some systems to suppress the use of extended ASCII codes. In practice, Alt0162 is a quick keystroke shortcut for typists and designers to embed the cent sign without relying on copy‑paste or character map tools.