When the argument of a WRITE command consists of a leading asterisk (*) followed by an integer expression, the WRITE command outputs the character represented by the code-point value of that integer expression.

With character set M specified at device OPEN, the WRITE * command transfers the character (byte) associated with the numeric value of the integer expression. With character UTF-8 specified at device OPEN, the WRITE command outputs the character associated with the numeric code-point value. If character set "UTF-16", "UTF-16LE" or "UTF-16BE" is specified, WRITE * transforms the character code to the mapping specified by that character set.