A Closer Look at Character Encoding Schemes for Computers

ASCII Character Encoding Scheme ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding scheme that represents characters as numeric codes. It was developed in the 1960s and became widely used in computer systems and communication protocols. ASCII uses 7 bits to represent characters, allowing for a total of 128 different characters, including control characters, uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, and various symbols. EBCDIC Character Encoding for Early IBM Mainframe Computers EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is another character encoding scheme that was primarily used on early IBM mainframe computers. Unlike ASCII, EBCDIC uses 8 bits to represent characters, allowing for a total of 256 different characters. EBCDIC was widely used in IBM mainframe environments but has become less common over time. Unicode - The Current Character Encoding Standard Unicode is a character encoding standard that aims to provide a universal representati...