Text Data
In virtually all computers, alpha-numeric data and special characters (i.e., letters, numbers and symbols) are each assigned a specific binary value, called a character code.
ASCII (American Standard for Information Interchange) is a coding system for representing characters.
Original ASCII is a 7-bit system and Extended ASCII uses "8-bit" sequences which simplify the representations as "1 byte-1 character".
Another coding system, Unicode (16-bit sequences that allow for many more bit combinations to represent values) is used to represent foreign language characters.
Below is a partial rendering of the ASCII Character Set - Revisit this page when you are familiar with Base-2 and Hex numbers.
- The first 32 characters, 0 - 31, are non-printable characters used by the system.
