Introduction to Character Encoding: ASCII and Unicode

What is Character Encoding?

Character encoding is a system that maps characters (letters, numbers, symbols) to numerical values that computers can understand and store. Without character encoding, computers would only be able to work with binary data (0s and 1s), which is not human-readable.

ASCII

• American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is one of the oldest and most widely used character encoding standards.
• It uses 7 bits to represent each character, allowing for 128 unique characters.
• These characters include uppercase and lowercase English letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and control characters.
• ASCII is a limited standard and does not include characters from other languages.

Unicode

• Unicode is a more comprehensive character encoding standard that aims to represent all the characters in all the world's writing systems.
• It uses 16 bits (UTF-16) or 32 bits (UTF-32) to represent each character, allowing for millions of unique characters.
• Unicode includes characters from various languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi.

Key Differences Between ASCII and Unicode

Example:

Consider the letter "A". In ASCII, it is represented by the decimal value 65, or the binary value 01000001. In Unicode, it is also represented by the same decimal value 65, but it is assigned a different Unicode code point, which is U+0041.

Importance of Character Encoding

• Accurate Data Representation: Character encoding ensures that data is represented and displayed correctly, regardless of the language or the system it is being used on.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Unicode allows for seamless communication and data exchange across different operating systems and applications.
• Global Communication: It enables communication and information sharing between people who use different languages and writing systems.

Conclusion

Understanding character encoding is essential for working with text data in computer systems. While ASCII is still widely used for basic text, Unicode provides a more comprehensive and future-proof solution for handling characters from all languages. Choosing the appropriate encoding is crucial for ensuring accurate data representation and communication.