4.1.8

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

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American Standard Code for Information Interchange

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) character set is the most common character set.

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ASCII

  • Each character in ASCII is represented by a seven-bit binary code.
    • That means there is a maximum of 128 characters.
  • ASCII includes all commonly used letters and symbols in the English language.
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7-bit letters?

  • Each letter is represented by seven bits.
  • This is useful because when used in an 8-bit system, the extra bit can be used as a check digit.
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Limitations of ASCII

  • 128 characters is perfectly fine for the English language. But it does not leave space for characters from other languages.
  • An extended ASCII set was released which used all eight bits, but it was still not enough.
  • This led to the release of Unicode.

Jump to other topics

1Computational Thinking & Algorithms

2Programming

3Hardware & Software

4Data

5The Internet

6Online Safety & Security

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