What is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interexchange)?

ASCII may refer to any of the following:

1. Short for American Standard Code for Information Interexchange, ASCII is a standard that assigns letters, numbers, and other characters in the 256 slots available in the 8-bit code.

The ASCII decimal (Dec) number is created from binary, which is the language of all computers.

As shown in the table below, the lowercase "h" character (Char) has a decimal value of 104, which is "01101000" in binary.

ASCII was first developed and published in 1963 by the X3 committee, a part of the ASA (American Standards Association).

The ASCII standard was first published as ASA X3.4-1963, with ten revisions of the standard being published between 1967 and 1986.

ASCII sections

The ASCII table is divided into three different sections.

Non-printable, system codes between 0 and 31.
Lower ASCII, between 32 and 127.

This table originates from the older, American systems, which worked on 7-bit character tables.
Higher ASCII, between 128 and 255.

This portion is programmable; characters are based on the language of your operating system or program you are using.

Foreign letters are also placed in this section.

Standard or lower ASCII characters and codes


Extended ASCII characters and codes

Extended ASCII uses eight instead of seven bits, which adds 128 additional characters.

This gives extended ASCII the ability for extra characters, such as special symbols, foreign language letters, and drawing characters as shown below.

Extended or Higher ASCII characters and codes

How do you pronounce ASCII?

ASCII is pronounced as as-key.

Convert text into ASCII

Use the following tool to convert any text into their Decimal ASCII values.



2. While in an FTP session, ascii is also a command to switch to ascii file transfer mode.

See how to use FTP for information about ascii and other FTP commands.

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