Data Representation: ASCII and Unicode

1. What is Data Representation?

 Computers work only with binary data (0s and 1s).
 To represent text (letters, digits, punctuation, emojis), we need a standard encoding
system that maps characters → binary codes.
 Two of the most important encoding systems are:
1. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
2. Unicode

2. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information

Interchange)
Definition:

ASCII is a character encoding standard developed in the 1960s to represent English

characters using 7 bits (later extended to 8 bits).

How it Works:

 Each character (letter, digit, symbol, control command) is assigned a unique numeric
code.
 For example:
o 'A' = 65 → 1000001 (binary)
o 'a' = 97 → 1100001 (binary)
o '0' = 48 → 0110000 (binary)
o Space = 32

Types of ASCII:

1. 7-bit ASCII (Standard ASCII):

o Can represent 128 characters (0–127).
o Includes: English alphabets (uppercase & lowercase), numbers, punctuation,
and control codes.
2. 8-bit ASCII (Extended ASCII):
o Can represent 256 characters (0–255).
o Adds extra symbols like graphical characters, accented letters (ç, ñ, é).

Advantages of ASCII:

 Simple and widely used.

 Efficient for English-based systems.
Limitations of ASCII:

 Can only represent English and a few special characters.

 Not suitable for global languages (e.g., Hindi, Chinese, Arabic).

3. Unicode
Definition:

Unicode is a universal character encoding standard designed to represent text from all
writing systems in the world (languages, symbols, emojis).

How it Works:

 Uses different encoding forms: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32.

 Provides a unique numeric code (called code point) for every character.
 Example:
o 'A' = U+0041
o 'क' (Hindi letter) = U+0915
o '中' (Chinese character) = U+4E2D
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