Number and Letter Representation
Explore how computers convert numbers and text into binary form using encoding systems like ASCII and Unicode. Learn the differences between seven-bit and eight-bit ASCII, and how Unicode enables broader character representation with UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoding techniques.
Character representation in binary
A computer can store all types of numbers ranging from negative to positive numbers and fractional to whole numbers. However, it can also store non-numeric data that can take on a number of discrete values, like the four seasons of a year. If you can assign a number to each possible distinct value, you can represent non-numeric data, such as text characters, on a computer. ASCII and Unicode are universal codes that encode a particular character into a binary number.
First came ASCII, which was initially a seven-bit encoding system as shown in Figure 2. Although seven bits were enough to cover all the characters in the English language and ...