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ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The ASCII code is a popular coding scheme used in digital computing systems to encode characters.
In the ASCII code, a unique integer value is assigned to each character like number, letter, symbol, etc. The standard ASCII code defines a set of 128 characters, where each character can be represented by a unique 7-bit binary code. Therefore, ASCII code can represent total 27 = 128 possible characters.
In digital electronics, the characters in ASCII code are generally represented in decimal or hexadecimal notation. Overall, the ASCII code is a standard encoding scheme for representing characters in digital computers and communication systems.
Properties of ASCII Code
The following are some key characteristics of ASCII code −
- ASCII code assigns a unique numeric value to each character.
- ASCII code provides a way of representing letters, numbers, symbols, and control characters.
- ASCII code is compatible with a wide range of programming languages and digital devices.
- ASCII code supports various control characters for basic text formatting and device control.
- ASCII code has decimal and hexadecimal representation. Hence, it is human-readable.
- ASCII code assigns numeric values to characters in a sequential order, making it an efficient encoding standard in terms of sorting and searching.
- ASCII code is highly space efficient and simple.
Types of ASCII Code
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code is basically a 7-bit character encoding standard used in digital electronics. But it is evolved with the advancement in computing technologies.
The following are two main types of ASCII codes −
- Standard ASCII Code
- Extended ASCII Code
Let”s discuss the Standard ASCII Codes first.
Standard ASCII Code
It is a 7-bit character encoding standard having a range from 0 to 127 i.e., total 128 possible characters. It assigns a 7-bit unique binary code to each character including numbers, letters, symbols, and control characters.
The following table highlights the name, symbol and ASCII code in decimal and binary form for the range from 0 to 127.
| Name | Symbol | Decimal | 7-Bit Binary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Null char | NUL | 0 | 00000000 |
| Start of Heading | SOH | 1 | 00000001 |
| Start of Text | STX | 2 | 00000010 |
| End of Text | ETX | 3 | 00000011 |
| End of Transmission | EOT | 4 | 00000100 |
| Enquiry | ENQ | 5 | 00000101 |
| Acknowledgment | ACK | 6 | 00000110 |
| Bell | BEL | 7 | 00000111 |
| Back Space | BS | 8 | 00001000 |
| Horizontal Tab | HT | 9 | 00001001 |
| Line Feed | LF | 10 | 00001010 |
| Vertical Tab | VT | 11 | 00001011 |
| Form Feed | FF | 12 | 00001100 |
| Carriage Return | CR | 13 | 00001101 |
| Shift Out / X-On | SO | 14 | 00001110 |
| Shift In / X-Off | SI | 15 | 00001111 |
| Data Line Escape | DLE | 16 | 00010000 |
| Device Control 1 (oft. XON) | DC1 | 17 | 00010001 |
| Device Control 2 | DC2 | 18 | 00010010 |
| Device Control 3 (oft. XOFF) | DC3 | 19 | 00010011 |
| Device Control 4 | DC4 | 20 | 00010100 |
| Negative Acknowledgement | NAK | 21 | 00010101 |
| Synchronous Idle | SYN | 22 | 00010110 |
| End of Transmit Block | ETB | 23 | 00010111 |
| Cancel | CAN | 24 | 00011000 |
| End of Medium | EM | 25 | 00011001 |
| Substitute | SUB | 26 | 00011010 |
| Escape | ESC | 27 | 00011011 |
| File Separator | FS | 28 | 00011100 |
| Group Separator | GS | 29 | 00011101 |
| Record Separator | RS | 30 | 00011110 |
| Unit Separator | US | 31 | 00011111 |
| Space | 32 | 00100000 | |
| Exclamation mark | ! | 33 | 00100001 |
| Double quotes | “ | 34 | 00100010 |
| Hash | # | 35 | 00100011 |
| Dollar | $ | 36 | 00100100 |
| Percentage | % | 37 | 00100101 |
| Ampersand | & | 38 | 00100110 |
| Single quote | ” | 39 | 00100111 |
| Open parenthesis | ( | 40 | 00101000 |
| Close parenthesis | ) | 41 | 00101001 |
| Asterisk | * | 42 | 00101010 |
| Plus | + | 43 | 00101011 |
| Comma | , | 44 | 00101100 |
| Hyphen | – | 45 | 00101101 |
| Period, dot or full stop | . | 46 | 00101110 |
| Slash or divide | / | 47 | 00101111 |
| Zero | 0 | 48 | 00110000 |
| One | 1 | 49 | 00110001 |
| Two | 2 | 50 | 00110010 |
| Three | 3 | 51 | 00110011 |
| Four | 4 | 52 | 00110100 |
| Five | 5 | 53 | 00110101 |
| Six | 6 | 54 | 00110110 |
| Seven | 7 | 55 | 00110111 |
| Eight | 8 | 56 | 00111000 |
| Nine | 9 | 57 | 00111001 |
| Colon | : | 58 | 00111010 |
| Semicolon | ; | 59 | 00111011 |
| Less than | < | 60 | 00111100 |
| Equals | = | 61 | 00111101 |
| Greater than | > | 62 | 00111110 |
| Question mark | ? | 63 | 00111111 |
| At symbol | @ | 64 | 01000000 |
| Uppercase A | A | 65 | 01000001 |
| Uppercase B | B | 66 | 01000010 |
| Uppercase C | C | 67 | 01000011 |
| Uppercase D | D | 68 | 01000100 |
| Uppercase E | E | 69 | 01000101 |
| Uppercase F | F | 70 | 01000110 |
| Uppercase G | G | 71 | 01000111 |
| Uppercase H | H | 72 | 01001000 |
| Uppercase I | I | 73 | 01001001 |
| Uppercase J | J | 74 | 01001010 |
| Uppercase K | K | 75 | 01001011 |
| Uppercase L | L | 76 | 01001100 |
| Uppercase M | M | 77 | 01001101 |
| Uppercase N | N | 78 | 01001110 |
| Uppercase O | O | 79 | 01001111 |
| Uppercase P | P | 80 | 01010000 |
| Uppercase Q | Q | 81 | 01010001 |
| Uppercase R | R | 82 | 01010010 |
| Uppercase S | S | 83 | 01010011 |
| Uppercase T | T | 84 | 01010100 |
| Uppercase U | U | 85 | 01010101 |
| Uppercase V | V | 86 | 01010110 |
| Uppercase W | W | 87 | 01010111 |
| Uppercase X | X | 88 | 01011000 |
| Uppercase Y | Y | 89 | 01011001 |
| Uppercase Z | Z | 90 | 01011010 |
| Opening bracket | [ | 91 | 01011011 |
| Backslash | 92 | 01011100 | |
| Closing bracket | ] | 93 | 01011101 |
| Caret – circumflex | ^ | 94 | 01011110 |
| Underscore | _ | 95 | 01011111 |
| Grave accent | ` | 96 | 01100000 |
| Lowercase a | a | 97 | 01100001 |
| Lowercase b | b | 98 | 01100010 |
| Lowercase c | c | 99 | 01100011 |
| Lowercase d | d | 100 | 01100100 |
| Lowercase e | e | 101 | 01100101 |
| Lowercase f | f | 102 | 01100110 |
| Lowercase g | g | 103 | 01100111 |
| Lowercase h | h | 104 | 01101000 |
| Lowercase i | i | 105 | 01101001 |
| Lowercase j | j | 106 | 01101010 |
| Lowercase k | k | 107 | 01101011 |
| Lowercase l | l | 108 | 01101100 |
| Lowercase m | m | 109 | 01101101 |
| Lowercase n | n | 110 | 01101110 |
| Lowercase o | o | 111 | 01101111 |
| Lowercase p | p | 112 | 01110000 |
| Lowercase q | q | 113 | 01110001 |
| Lowercase r | r | 114 | 01110010 |
| Lowercase s | s | 115 | 01110011 |
| Lowercase t | t | 116 | 01110100 |
| Lowercase u | u | 117 | 01110101 |
| Lowercase v | v | 118 | 01110110 |
| Lowercase w | w | 119 | 01110111 |
| Lowercase x | x | 120 | 01111000 |
| Lowercase y | y | 121 | 01111001 |
| Lowercase z | z | 122 | 01111010 |
| Opening brace | { | 123 | 01111011 |
| Vertical bar | | | 124 | 01111100 |
| Closing brace | } | 125 | 01111101 |
| Equivalency sign (tilde) | ~ | 126 | 01111110 |
| Delete | 127 | 01111111 |
Extended ASCII Code
It is an 8-bit character encoding standard having a range from 0 to 255 i.e., total 256 possible characters. The extended ASCII code adds extra 128 characters to the standard ASCII code.
The following table shows the name, symbol and ASCII code in decimal and binary form for the range from 128 to 255.
| Name | Symbol | DEC | BIN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Euro sign | € | 128 | 10000000 |
| 129 | 10000001 | ||
| Single low-9 quotation mark | ‚ | 130 | 10000010 |
| Latin small letter f with hook | ƒ | 131 | 10000011 |
| Double low-9 quotation mark | „ | 132 | 10000100 |
| Horizontal ellipsis | … | 133 | 10000101 |
| Dagger | † | 134 | 10000110 |
| Double dagger | ‡ | 135 | 10000111 |
| Modifier letter circumflex accent | ˆ | 136 | 10001000 |
| Per mille sign | ‰ | 137 | 10001001 |
| Latin capital letter S with caron | Š | 138 | 10001010 |
| Single left-pointing angle quotation | ‹ | 139 | 10001011 |
| Latin capital ligature OE | Π| 140 | 10001100 |
| 141 | 10001101 | ||
| Latin capital letter Z with caron | Ž | 142 | 10001110 |
| 143 | 10001111 | ||
| 144 | 10010000 | ||
| Left single quotation mark | ‘ | 145 | 10010001 |
| Right single quotation mark | ’ | 146 | 10010010 |
| Left double quotation mark | “ | 147 | 10010011 |
| Right double quotation mark | ” | 148 | 10010100 |
| Bullet | • | 149 | 10010101 |
| En dash | – | 150 | 10010110 |
| Em dash | — | 151 | 10010111 |
| Small tilde | ˜ | 152 | 10011000 |
| Trade mark sign | ™ | 153 | 10011001 |
| Latin small letter S with caron | š | 154 | 10011010 |
| Single right-pointing angle quotation mark | › | 155 | 10011011 |
| Latin small ligature oe | œ | 156 | 10011100 |
| 157 | 10011101 | ||
| Latin small letter z with caron | ž | 158 | 10011110 |
| Latin capital letter Y with diaeresis | Ÿ | 159 | 10011111 |
| Non-breaking space | 160 | 10100000 | |
| Inverted exclamation mark | ¡ | 161 | 10100001 |
| Cent sign | ¢ | 162 | 10100010 |
| Pound sign | £ | 163 | 10100011 |
| Currency sign | ¤ | 164 | 10100100 |
| Yen sign | ¥ | 165 | 10100101 |
| Pipe, Broken vertical bar | ¦ | 166 | 10100110 |
| Section sign | § | 167 | 10100111 |
| Spacing diaeresis – umlaut | ¨ | 168 | 10101000 |
| Copyright sign | © | 169 | 10101001 |
| Feminine ordinal indicator | ª | 170 | 10101010 |
| Left double angle quotes | « | 171 | 10101011 |
| Not sign | ¬ | 172 | 10101100 |
| Soft hyphen | 173 | 10101101 | |
| Registered trade mark sign | ® | 174 | 10101110 |
| Spacing macron – overline | ¯ | 175 | 10101111 |
| Degree sign | ° | 176 | 10110000 |
| Plus-or-minus sign | ± | 177 | 10110001 |
| Superscript two – squared | ² | 178 | 10110010 |
| Superscript three – cubed | ³ | 179 | 10110011 |
| Acute accent – spacing acute | ´ | 180 | 10110100 |
| Micro sign | µ | 181 | 10110101 |
| Pilcrow sign – paragraph sign | ¶ | 182 | 10110110 |
| Middle dot – Georgian comma | · | 183 | 10110111 |
| Spacing cedilla | ¸ | 184 | 10111000 |
| Superscript one | ¹ | 185 | 10111001 |
| Masculine ordinal indicator | º | 186 | 10111010 |
| Right double angle quotes | » | 187 | 10111011 |
| Fraction one quarter | ¼ | 188 | 10111100 |
| Fraction one half | ½ | 189 | 10111101 |
| Fraction three quarters | ¾ | 190 | 10111110 |
| Inverted question mark | ¿ | 191 | 10111111 |
| Latin capital letter A with grave | À | 192 | 11000000 |
| Latin capital letter A with acute | Á | 193 | 11000001 |
| Latin capital letter A with circumflex | Â | 194 | 11000010 |
| Latin capital letter A with tilde | Ã | 195 | 11000011 |
| Latin capital letter A with diaeresis | Ä | 196 | 11000100 |
| Latin capital letter A with ring above | Å | 197 | 11000101 |
| Latin capital letter AE | Æ | 198 | 11000110 |
| Latin capital letter C with cedilla | Ç | 199 | 11000111 |
| Latin capital letter E with grave | È | 200 | 11001000 |
| Latin capital letter E with acute | É | 201 | 11001001 |
| Latin capital letter E with circumflex | Ê | 202 | 11001010 |
| Latin capital letter E with diaeresis | Ë | 203 | 11001011 |
| Latin capital letter I with grave | Ì | 204 | 11001100 |
| Latin capital letter I with acute | Í | 205 | 11001101 |
| Latin capital letter I with circumflex | Î | 206 | 11001110 |
| Latin capital letter I with diaeresis | Ï | 207 | 11001111 |
| Latin capital letter ETH | Ð | 208 | 11010000 |
| Latin capital letter N with tilde | Ñ | 209 | 11010001 |
| Latin capital letter O with grave | Ò | 210 | 11010010 |
| Latin capital letter O with acute | Ó | 211 | 11010011 |
| Latin capital letter O with circumflex | Ô | 212 | 11010100 |
| Latin capital letter O with tilde | Õ | 213 | 11010101 |
| Latin capital letter O with diaeresis | Ö | 214 | 11010110 |
| Multiplication sign | × | 215 | 11010111 |
| Latin capital letter O with slash | Ø | 216 | 11011000 |
| Latin capital letter U with grave | Ù | 217 | 11011001 |
| Latin capital letter U with acute | Ú | 218 | 11011010 |
| Latin capital letter U with circumflex | Û | 219 | 11011011 |
| Latin capital letter U with diaeresis | Ü | 220 | 11011100 |
| Latin capital letter Y with acute | Ý | 221 | 11011101 |
| Latin capital letter THORN | Þ | 222 | 11011110 |
| Latin small letter sharp s – ess-zed | ß | 223 | 11011111 |
| Latin small letter a with grave | à | 224 | 11100000 |
| Latin small letter a with acute | á | 225 | 11100001 |
| Latin small letter a with circumflex | â | 226 | 11100010 |
| Latin small letter a with tilde | ã | 227 | 11100011 |
| Latin small letter a with diaeresis | ä | 228 | 11100100 |
| Latin small letter a with ring above | å | 229 | 11100101 |
| Latin small letter ae | æ | 230 | 11100110 |
| Latin small letter c with cedilla | ç | 231 | 11100111 |
| Latin small letter e with grave | è | 232 | 11101000 |
| Latin small letter e with acute | é | 233 | 11101001 |
| Latin small letter e with circumflex | ê | 234 | 11101010 |
| Latin small letter e with diaeresis | ë | 235 | 11101011 |
| Latin small letter i with grave | ì | 236 | 11101100 |
| Latin small letter i with acute | í | 237 | 11101101 |
| Latin small letter i with circumflex | î | 238 | 11101110 |
| Latin small letter i with diaeresis | ï | 239 | 11101111 |
| Latin small letter eth | ð | 240 | 11110000 |
| Latin small letter n with tilde | ñ | 241 | 11110001 |
| Latin small letter o with grave | ò | 242 | 11110010 |
| Latin small letter o with acute | ó | 243 | 11110011 |
| Latin small letter o with circumflex | ô | 244 | 11110100 |
| Latin small letter o with tilde | õ | 245 | 11110101 |
| Latin small letter o with diaeresis | ö | 246 | 11110110 |
| Division sign | ÷ | 247 | 11110111 |
| Latin small letter o with slash | ø | 248 | 11111000 |
| Latin small letter u with grave | ù | 249 | 11111001 |
| Latin small letter u with acute | ú | 250 | 11111010 |
| Latin small letter u with circumflex | û | 251 | 11111011 |
| Latin small letter u with diaeresis | ü | 252 | 11111100 |
| Latin small letter y with acute | ý | 253 | 11111101 |
| Latin small letter thorn | þ | 254 | 11111110 |
| Latin small letter y with diaeresis | ÿ | 255 | 11111111 |
Advantages of ASCII Code
The following are the key benefits of the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code −
- The ASCII code provides a simple and straightforward encoding scheme to represent letters, numbers, and symbols.
- ASCII code is compatible with a wide range of programming languages and computing devices.
- ASCII code provides a compact character representation, where each character can be represented using 7-bits or 8-bits. Hence, it is a space efficient encoding standard.
- ASCII code is a universally adopted encoding standard in the field of digital electronics.
- ASCII code has easy and simple implementation in hardware and software.
Limitations of ASCII Code
ASCII code has several advantages as described above, but it also has some limitations which are given below −
- The standard ASCII code has a limited set of 128 characters. This makes it unsuitable for representing characters of languages other than English.
- The ASCII code can be extended to 8-bits but it is not standardized beyond 7-bits.
- ASCII code is not suitable to use in systems that require a broad range of characters.
Applications of ASCII Code
ASCII code is a standard character encoding scheme used in wide range of applications in the field of digital electronics.
Some major applications of ASCII code are listed below −
- ASCII code is used in digital systems for textual communication.
- ASCII code is used in computer programming to represent alphanumeric data like letters, numbers, symbols, etc.
- ASCII code is also used in various communication protocols utilized for data transmission among devices.
- In the field web technology, ASCII code is used to represent different characters and symbols in a webpage.
- ASCII code is also used in database systems to represent text data.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding scheme widely used in digital systems. It is a 7-bit standard code used to represent a total of 128 characters including numbers, letters, symbols, and control characters.
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