Understanding Data Representation: Characters

Basics of Characters in Data Representation:

Characters are the smallest readable unit in text, including alphabets, numbers, spaces, symbols etc.
In computer systems, each character is represented by a unique binary code.
The system by which characters are converted to binary code is known as a character set.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and Unicode are two popular character sets.
ASCII uses 7 bits to represent each character, leading to a total of 128 possible characters (including some non-printable control characters).
As a more modern and comprehensive system, Unicode can represent over a million characters, covering virtually all writing systems in use today.
Unicode is backward compatible with ASCII, meaning ASCII values represent the same characters in Unicode.

Having a standard system for representing characters is important for interoperability, ensuring different systems can read and display the same characters in the same way.
This is especially important in programming and when transmitting data over networks.

Each character in a character set is represented by a unique binary number. E.g., in ASCII, the capital letter “A” is represented by the binary number 1000001.
Different types of data (e.g., characters, integers, floating-point values) are stored in different ways, but ultimately all data in a computer is stored as binary.

In most programming languages, single characters are represented within single quotes, e.g., ‘a’, ‘1’, ‘$’.
A series of characters, also known as a string, is represented within double quotes, e.g., “Hello, world!”.
String manipulation is a key part of many programming tasks, and understanding how characters are represented is essential for manipulating strings effectively.

It’s important to understand that computers interpret everything — not just letters and numbers, but also images, sounds, and more — as binary data.
Understanding the binary representation of characters is a foundational part of understanding how data is stored and manipulated in a computer system.