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ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Enhanced Definition

A character encoding standard using 7 or 8 bits to represent text characters, widely used in modern computing systems including UNIX, Linux, Windows, and the internet. ASCII differs from EBCDIC, the character encoding used on IBM mainframes. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard predominantly used in non-mainframe computing environments such as PCs, Unix, Linux, and the internet. While IBM mainframes natively utilize EBCDIC, ASCII is critical for interoperability and data exchange when z/OS systems interact with distributed platforms.

Key Characteristics

- 128 characters in standard 7-bit ASCII (0-127)
- Extended ASCII uses 8 bits for 256 characters (0-255)
- Includes control characters, digits, letters, and symbols
- Foundation for Unicode and UTF-8 encoding
- Direct byte-to-character mapping
Character Ranges:
- 0-31: Control characters (NULL, CR, LF, TAB, ESC)
- 32-47: Special characters and punctuation
- 48-57: Numeric digits (0-9)
- 65-90: Uppercase letters (A-Z)
- 97-122: Lowercase letters (a-z)
- 128-255: Extended characters (in 8-bit versions)
ASCII vs EBCDIC:
- Different numeric values for same characters
- Different collating sequences (sort orders)
- Requires translation for data exchange with mainframes
- Impact on string operations and comparisons
- Considerations for file transfers and network protocols

Use Cases

- Data exchange between mainframes and distributed systems
- File transfer protocols (FTP, SFTP)
- ASCII-to-EBCDIC translation in middleware
- Web services and API integration
- Email and internet communications