Why Unicode is Used Over ASCII

Why Unicode is Used Over ASCII

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard that uses 7 bits to represent 128 characters, including uppercase and lowercase English letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and control characters. While ASCII was sufficient for English text, it lacked support for other languages and symbols.

Unicode emerged as a solution to this limitation. It is a character encoding standard that assigns a unique numerical value to each character in a wide range of writing systems, including:

• Latin alphabet
• Greek alphabet
• Cyrillic alphabet
• Arabic alphabet
• Chinese characters
• Japanese characters
• Korean characters
• Mathematical symbols
• Emojis

Here's why Unicode is used over ASCII:

1. Global Coverage:

Unicode supports a vast number of characters, encompassing nearly all the world's writing systems. This global coverage makes it ideal for multilingual documents and communication.

2. Consistent Character Representation:

Unicode ensures that a character is represented consistently across different platforms and applications. This prevents misinterpretations and ensures that text displays correctly regardless of the operating system or software used.

3. Support for Multiple Languages:

ASCII only supports English characters, while Unicode handles a wide range of languages, including:

• European languages
• Asian languages
• African languages
• Indigenous languages

4. Extended Character Set:

Unicode includes a comprehensive set of symbols and characters beyond the basic ASCII set, such as:

• Mathematical symbols
• Technical symbols
• Currency symbols
• Emojis

5. Future-Proof:

Unicode is constantly evolving and expanding to include new characters and scripts. This ensures that it remains relevant and capable of representing future language needs.

Example:

Let's consider the character "é" (e with acute accent). In ASCII, this character is not represented. However, Unicode assigns a specific code point to "é", allowing it to be displayed correctly across different platforms.

Conclusion:

Unicode is a superior character encoding standard that offers global coverage, consistent character representation, support for multiple languages, an extended character set, and future-proof capabilities. It has become the industry standard for character encoding, replacing ASCII for its limitations in handling diverse languages and symbols.