Character Representation/Encoding

We now know how computers represent and store signed numbers. But what about characters and strings?

Several character representation systems (called encoding systems) have been developed and used since the middle of the 20th century, the two popular of which are ASCII and Unicode.

ASCII was developed in the early 1960s by a committee from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The first version of ASCII was published in 1963, and it was later updated in 1967 to include lowercase letters and more control characters. ASCII became widely adopted due to its simplicity and efficiency, particularly in early computers and communication systems. It was crucial in standardizing how devices exchanged text data, contributing to the growth of digital communication.

The final version of ASCII contains representations, in numeric format, for letters, numbers, punctuation marks, control characters, and certain other special characters. For example, the letter "A" is represented by the number $65$ and "a" by $97$.