Character Encoding (AQA GCSE Computer Science): Flashcards

System converting text to binary code for computer processing

Complete list of characters a computer can understand & display

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

7 bits

$2^7 = 128$ characters

8 bits (1 byte)

Support characters from all world languages, not just English

16 bits or 32 bits

$2^{16} = 65,536$ characters

$2^{32} = 4,294,967,296$ characters

First 128 Unicode characters are identical to ASCII

Unicode: 2-4 bytes per char; ASCII: 1 byte per char

More bits per character = larger character set

52 letters, 10 digits, 33 punctuation, 32 control characters