What is ASCII: chart, code, characters
Computer memory saves all data in digital form. There is no way to store characters directly. Each character has its digital code equivalent: ASCII code (for American Standard Code for Information Interchange). Basic ASCII code represented characters as 7 bits (for 128 possible characters, numbered from 0 to 127). In the 1960s, the ASCII code was adopted as the new standard. With it, characters can be coded using 8 bits for 256 possible characters.
What is the ASCII code chart?
Codes 0 to 31 are not used for characters They are called control characters because they are used for actions like:
- Carriage return (CR).
- Bell (BEL).
Codes 65 to 90 stand for uppercase letters, and codes 97 to 122 stand for lowercase letters (Changing the 6th-bit switches uppercase to lowercase; this is equivalent to adding 32 to the ASCII code in base-10.)
ASCII character chart
| Character | ASCII Code | Hexadecimal Code |
|---|---|---|
| NUL (Null) | 0 | 00 |
| SOH (Start of heading) | 1 | 01 |
| STX (Start of text) | 2 | 02 |
| ETX (End of text) | 3 | 03 |
| EOT (End of transmission) | 4 | 04 |
| ENQ (Enquiry) | 5 | 05 |
| ACK (Acknowledge) | 6 | 06 |
| BEL (Bell) | 7 | 07 |
| BS (Backspace) | 8 | 08 |
| TAB (Horizontal tabulation) | 9 | 09 |
| LF (Line Feed) | 10 | 0A |
| VT (Vertical tabulation) | 11 | 0B |
| FF (Form feed) | 12 | 0C |
| CR (Carriage return) | 13 | 0D |
| SO (Shift out) | 14 | 0E |
| SI (Shift in) | 15 | 0F |
| DLE (Data link escape) | 16 | 10 |
| DC1 (Device control 1) | 17 | 11 |
| DC2 (Device control 2) | 18 | 12 |
| DC3 (Device control 3) | 19 | 13 |
| DC4 (Device control 4) | 20 | 14 |
| NAK (Negative acknowledgement) | 21 | 15 |
| SYN (Synchronous idle) | 22 | 16 |
| ETB (End of transmission block) | 23 | 17 |
| CAN (Cancel) | 24 | 18 |
| EM (End of medium) | 25 | 19 |
| SUB (Substitute) | 26 | 1A |
| ESC (Escape) | 27 | 1B |
| FS (File separator) | 28 | 1C |
| GS (Group separator) | 29 | 1D |
| RS (Record separator) | 30 | 1E |
| US (Unit separator) | 31 | 1F |
| SP (Space) | 32 | 20 |
| ! | 33 | 21 |
| " | 34 | 22 |
| # | 35 | 23 |
| $ | 36 | 24 |
| % | 37 | 25 |
| & | 38 | 26 |
| ' | 39 | 27 |
| ( | 40 | 28 |
| ) | 41 | 29 |
| * | 42 | 2A |
| + | 43 | 2B |
| , | 44 | 2C |
| - | 45 | 2D |
| . | 46 | 2E |
| / | 47 | 2F |
| 0 | 48 | 30 |
| 1 | 49 | 31 |
| 2 | 50 | 32 |
| 3 | 51 | 33 |
| 4 | 52 | 34 |
| 5 | 53 | 35 |
| 6 | 54 | 36 |
| 7 | 55 | 37 |
| 8 | 56 | 38 |
| 9 | 57 | 39 |
| : | 58 | 3A |
| ; | 59 | 3B |
| < | 60 | 3C |
| = | 61 | 3D |
| > | 62 | 3E |
| ? | 63 | 3F |
| @ | 64 | 40 |
| A | 65 | 41 |
| B | 66 | 42 |
| C | 67 | 43 |
| D | 68 | 44 |
| E | 69 | 45 |
| F | 70 | 46 |
| G | 71 | 47 |
| H | 72 | 48 |
| I | 73 | 49 |
| J | 74 | 4A |
| K | 75 | 4B |
| L | 76 | 4C |
| M | 77 | 4D |
| N | 78 | 4E |
| O | 79 | 4F |
| P | 80 | 50 |
| Q | 81 | 51 |
| R | 82 | 52 |
| S | 83 | 53 |
| T | 84 | 54 |
| U | 85 | 55 |
| V | 86 | 56 |
| W | 87 | 57 |
| X | 88 | 58 |
| Y | 89 | 59 |
| Z | 90 | 5A |
| [ | 91 | 5B |
| \ | 92 | 5C |
| ] | 93 | 5D |
| ^ | 94 | 5E |
| _ | 95 | 5F |
| ' | 96 | 60 |
| a | 97 | 61 |
| b | 98 | 62 |
| c | 99 | 63 |
| d | 100 | 64 |
| e | 101 | 65 |
| f | 102 | 66 |
| g | 103 | 67 |
| h | 104 | 68 |
| i | 105 | 69 |
| j | 106 | 6A |
| k | 107 | 6B |
| l | 108 | 6C |
| m | 109 | 6D |
| n | 110 | 6E |
| o | 111 | 6F |
| p | 112 | 70 |
| q | 113 | 71 |
| r | 114 | 72 |
| s | 115 | 73 |
| t | 116 | 74 |
| u | 117 | 75 |
| v | 118 | 76 |
| w | 119 | 77 |
| x | 120 | 78 |
| y | 121 | 79 |
| z | 122 | 7A |
| { | 123 | 7B |
| 124 | 7C | |
| } | 125 | 7D |
| ~ | 126 | 7E |
| Delete key | 127 | 7F |
Extended ASCII Character Chart
ASCII Code was developed for use with the English language. It does not have accented characters, or language-specific characters. To encode such a character, a different code system is needed. ASCII code was extended to 8 bits (a byte) in order to be able to encode more characters (this is also known as Extended ASCII Code). This code assigns the values 0 to 255 (coded as 8 bits, that is, 1 byte) to uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, punctuation marks and other symbols (including accented characters, in the code iso-latin1).
Extended ASCII code is not standardized, and varies depending on which platform is used.
The two most commonly used extended ASCII character sets are:
- OEM Extended ASCII Code: it was built into the first IBM PCs.
- ANSI Extended ASCII CODE: it is used by recent operating systems
What is the EBCDIC code?
Developed by IBM, EBCDIC code (short for Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is used for encoding characters with 8 bits. Though widespread on IBM computers, it has not been as successful as ASCII code.
What is unicode?
Unicode is a 16-bit character encoding system developed in 1991. Unicode can express any character as a 16-bit code, regardless of operating system or programming language.
It includes almost all current alphabets (among them Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) and is compatible with ASCII code.