[1] : WordNet (r) 2.0

american standard code for information interchange
     n : computer science a code for information exchange between
         computers made by different companies; a string of 7
         binary digits represents each character; used in most
         microcomputers syn: ascii
see also:
ascii 

[2] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

american standard code for information interchange
     
        the basis of character sets used in almost all present-day
        computers.  us-ascii uses only the lower seven bits
        character points 0 to 127 to convey some control codes,
        space, numbers, most basic punctuation, and unaccented letters
        a-z and a-z.  more modern coded character sets e.g.,
        latin-1, unicode define extensions to ascii for values
        above 127 for conveying special latin characters like
        accented characters, or german ess-tsett, characters from
        non-latin writing systems e.g., cyrillic, or han
        characters, and such desirable glyphs as distinct open-
        and close-quotation marks.  ascii replaced earlier systems
        such as ebcdic and baudot, which used fewer bytes, but
        were each broken in their own way.
     
        computers are much pickier about spelling than humans; thus,
        hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters,
        and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand
        for them.  every character has one or more names - some
        formal, some concise, some silly.
     
        individual characters are listed in this dictionary with
        alternative names from revision 2.3 of the usenet ascii
        pronunciation guide in rough order of popularity, including
        their official itu-t names and the particularly silly names
        introduced by intercal.
     
        see v ampersand, asterisk, back quote, backslash,
        caret, colon, comma, commercial at, control-c,
        dollar, dot, double quote, equals, exclamation mark,
        greater than, hash, left bracket, left parenthesis,
        less than, minus, parentheses, oblique stroke,
        percent, plus, question mark, right brace, right
        brace, right bracket, right parenthesis, semicolon,
        single quote, space, tilde, underscore, vertical
        bar, zero.
     
        some other common usages cause odd overlaps.  the "", "$",
        ">", and "" characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex"
        in different communities because various assemblers use them
        as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants in particular,
        "" in many assembler-programming cultures, "$" in the 6502
        world, ">" at texas instruments, and "" on the bbc micro,
        acorn archimedes, sinclair, and some zilog z80
        machines.  see also splat.
     
        the inability of us-ascii to correctly represent nearly any
        language other than english became an obvious and intolerable
        misfeature as computer use outside the us and uk became the
        rule rather than the exception see software rot.  and so
        national extensions to us-ascii were developed, such as
        latin-1.
     
        hardware and software from the us still tends to embody the
        assumption that us-ascii is the universal character set and
        that words of text consist entirely of byte values 65-90 and
        97-122 a-z and a-z; this is a major irritant to people who
        want to use a character set suited to their own languages.
        perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by
        proliferating sets of national characters produced an
        evolutionary pressure especially in protocol design, e.g.,
        the url standard to stick to us-ascii as a subset common
        to all those in use, and therefore to stick to english as the
        language encodable with the common subset of all the ascii
        dialects.  this basic problem with having a multiplicity of
        national character sets ended up being a prime justification
        for unicode, which was designed, ostensibly, to be the one
        ascii extension anyone will need.
     
        a system is described as "eight-bit clean" if it doesn't
        mangle text with byte values above 127, as some older systems
        did.
     
        see also ascii character table, yu-shiang whole fish.
     
        1995-03-06
     
     
see also:
us-ascii bit character points control codes latin-1 unicode 
han characters glyphs ebcdic baudot broken 
usenet itu-t intercal v ampersand 
asterisk back quote backslash caret colon 
comma commercial at control-c dollar dot 
double quote equals exclamation mark greater than hash 
left bracket left parenthesis less than minus parentheses 
oblique stroke percent plus question mark right brace 
right brace right bracket right parenthesis semicolon single quote 
space tilde underscore vertical bar zero 
hexadecimal 6502 texas instruments bbc micro acorn archimedes 
sinclair zilog z80 splat misfeature software rot 
url eight-bit clean ascii character table yu-shiang whole fish 

Code >> C Words
Code, definition of term: Code
code_pag1.html

Code Grinder >> C Words
Code Grinder, definition of term: Code Grinder
code+grinder_pag1.html

Country Code >> C Words
Country Code, definition of term: Country Code
country+code_pag1.html

Dead Code >> D Words
Dead Code, definition of term: Dead Code
dead+code_pag1.html

Double Standard >> D Words
Double Standard, definition of term: Double Standard
double+standard_pag1.html

Fire Code >> F Words
Fire Code, definition of term: Fire Code
fire+code_pag1.html

Draconian Code >> D Words
Draconian Code, definition of term: Draconian Code
draconian+code_pag1.html

Code Division M >> C Words
Code Division M, definition of term: Code Division M
code+division+m_pag1.html

Bar Code >> B Words
Bar Code, definition of term: Bar Code
bar+code_pag1.html

Baudot Code >> B Words
Baudot Code, definition of term: Baudot Code
baudot+code_pag1.html

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