ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a text coding standard that forms the basis of digital communication. It is used worldwide to encode text data consistently, allowing computers and other devices to exchange information seamlessly. In this blog, we explain what ASCII is, why it's important and how it works, with practical examples and insights for IT professionals, developers, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts.
ASCII is a character set that converts each character, number or symbol into a unique binary code. This makes it possible to store and process text information in digital systems. The standard was developed in 1963 by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is still used worldwide.
ASCII uses 7 bits to encode characters, resulting in 128 possible combinations (from 0000000 to 1111111). These combinations include:
Uppercase letters (A-Z)
Lowercase letters (a-z)
Numbers (0-9)
Punctuation marks and special characters (!, @, #, etc.)
Control symbols (such as carriage return or line feed)
Example of ASCII codes
This encoding allows computers to understand and correctly display letters, numbers and symbols.
ASCII plays a crucial role in digital communication because of the following reasons:
ASCII provides a universal standard for encoding text, allowing different systems and devices to communicate with each other without problems.
Virtually all modern programming languages and operating systems understand ASCII, making it a reliable choice for text processing and communication.
Although ASCII originally supported only 128 characters, it has become the basis for more comprehensive encodings such as UTF-8. Unicode, including UTF-8, builds on ASCII and supports thousands of additional characters for international communication.
Potential challenges.
ASCII does not support diacritics (such as é, ç or ñ) used in many languages.
Non-Latin scripts, such as Cyrillic, Chinese or Arabic, require Unicode.
ASCII can be found in various industries and applications. Here are some common examples:
Web development
Web developers use ASCII to encode characters in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Special characters such as spaces or symbols are represented by ASCII codes (e.g., for a non-breakable space).
Network communication
Network protocols such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP use ASCII codes to exchange text data. This ensures that e-mails and web pages are formatted and displayed correctly.
Databases and storage.
In databases, text data is often stored and retrieved using ASCII codes, especially when simple text strings without special characters are processed.
Programming languages
Many programming languages, such as Python, C++ and Java, use ASCII for string manipulation and text processing. In Python, you can easily query ASCII codes with the ord() function.
Example in Python:
print(ord('A')) # Output: 65
print(chr(65)) # Output: 'A'Although ASCII was long the standard, Unicode is now the norm because of the need for a more comprehensive character set. Here are the key differences:
Unicode is backwards compatible with ASCII, allowing legacy systems to still function within modern applications.
ASCII has been the basis for digital text communication for decades. Although Unicode is now the standard, ASCII remains relevant in systems where simple, consistent text encoding is needed. Understanding ASCII will help you better understand how digital communication works and the transition to modern character encodings.
Below is the complete ASCII table, including all control characters, numbers, letters, and special symbols. This table serves as a helpful reference when working with character encoding, data transmission, or programming languages that utilize ASCII. The values are displayed in decimal, hexadecimal, and binary formats, along with their corresponding symbols and descriptions.
Use this table to quickly look up ASCII values or gain a deeper understanding of how characters are encoded at a low level.
An object in programming is an instance of a class and contains properties (attributes) and functionalities (methods). Objects are used in object-oriented programming (OOP) to combine data and functionality into a single entity.
In a computer, objects can refer to software entities within OOP, as well as files, windows or system resources managed by the operating system. An object in OOP is a programming concept, while an object in a computer can be interpreted more broadly.
A class is a blueprint or template from which objects are created. An object is an instance of a class with specific properties and methods. For example, a class Car can be a blueprint, and an object my_car = Car(“Tesla”, “red”) is a specific car with characteristics.
