ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Overview:
– ASCII is a character encoding standard used for representing text in computers and other devices that work with text.
– It is based on the English alphabet and includes a set of 128 characters.
Key Features:
– Character Range:
– ASCII includes control characters (0-31) for text formatting and communication.
– Printable characters (32-126) include letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), punctuation marks, and special symbols.
- Encoding:
Each character is represented by a 7-bit binary number, allowing for 128 unique symbols.
Compatibility:
- ASCII is foundational for many modern character encoding schemes, making it widely compatible across different systems.
Usage:
– Programming Languages: ASCII is often used in programming for defining variables, strings, and commands.
– Data Transmission: It ensures that text data is sent and received in a consistent format across different devices.
Limitations:
– Language Support: ASCII only supports English characters and lacks representation for characters from other languages, which is addressed by extended encoding systems like UTF-8.
Conclusion:
– ASCII remains a crucial standard in computer science and information technology, facilitating data exchange and text representation.