Meaning of ASCII

According to AbbreviationFinder, ASCII is the acronym that corresponds to the English expression American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This phrase can be translated as the American Standard Code for the Exchange of Information. It is a coding pattern that is used in the field of computing.

The ASCII is basically a character code that is based on Roman or Latin alphabet. This means that ASCII serves to convert, through a series of rules, a character that is part of a natural language (like a letter of an alphabet) into a symbol that belongs to another class of representative system.

The creation of ASCII occurred in 1963 from the reformulation of the codes used in telegraphy. Four years later, lower case letters were added and certain codes were changed.

The American telecommunications company known as AT&T, of international popularity, at that time was called Bell, and it provided the data services that promoted the ASCII code. Bell originally intended to use just six bits, but after joining the American Standards Agency, whose acronym was ASA, this changed and the seventh bit was added.

For character representation, ASCII uses 7 bits. The code allows you to define 32 characters that are not printable, followed by 95 printable characters. Being a 7- bit code, it appeals to strings of bits that can be represented with seven binary digits, which are decimal between 0 and 127.

When ASCII code first appeared, the most common was the use of groups of eight bits in computers as the smallest possible unit of information; The last bit, which was known as the parity bit, used to be used to control errors in communication lines, although it could also be used for other functions, depending on the device in question.

Computers that did not use error checking generally assigned a zero to this bit; however, the Prime series of computers, among others, placed a one in the eighth bit. It is important to highlight that the ASCII code does not take into account data such as the appearance or the structure of the text, since for all this there are certain specific languages, such as those of labels, but it focuses on the characters and some control codes that take advantage of word processors.

Specifically, ASCII maps these strings to the symbols they represent (such as letters and numbers). This makes it easier to store and process information on a computer (computer) and communication between different digital devices.

The use of a particular character code is extremely useful to avoid the loss of information as a consequence of the incompatibility between different programs; In other words, if we know what code a text document is based on, we can always interpret it. Of course, this happens automatically for most users, since the operating system and word processors do not emphasize the importance of encryption or provide accessible options to manipulate it.

As with most topics specific to the world of technology, advanced users use software that does allow them to change this and many other aspects of their documents, although many times they must take certain extra steps to adapt the applications to their needs..

Artistic manifestations that use this code to create images are known as ASCII art. By developing drawings with ASCII characters, artists achieve a very particular optical effect.


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