KOI7 is a 7-bit character encoding

Character encoding

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...

, designed to cover Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

In Russian, KOI7 stands for Kod Obmena Informatsiey, 7 bit (Код Обмена Информацией, 7 бит) which means "Code for Information Exchange, 7 bit".

Codepage layout

KOI7
	—0	—1	—2	—3	—4	—5	—6	—7	—8	—9	—A	—B	—C	—D	—E	—F

The dollar sign

Dollar sign

The dollar or peso sign is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units of currency around the world.- Origin :...

 character ("$" hex 24), however, was often replaced with the universal currency sign

Currency (typography)

The currency sign is a character used to denote a currency, when the symbol for a particular currency is unavailable. It is particularly common in place of symbols, such as that of the Colón , which are absent from most character sets and fonts...

"¤" in Soviet computers. A popular legend has it that this was to demonstrate independence of the American-dominanted computer industry — which was ironic, since a significant number of Soviet computers were actually implementations of various American designs.