<character> The following list gives the octal, decimal and hexadecimal ASCII codes for each character along with its printed representation and common name(s). Oct Dec Hex Name 000 0 0x00 NUL 001 1 0x01 SOH, Control-A 002 2 0x02 STX, Control-B 003 3 0x03 ETX, Control-C 004 4 0x04 EOT, Control-D 005 5 0x05 ENQ, Control-E 006 6 0x06 ACK, Control-F 007 7 0x07 BEL, Control-G 010 8 0x08 BS, backspace, Control-H 011 9 0x09 HT, tab, Control-I 012 10 0x0a LF, line feed, newline, Control-J 013 11 0x0b VT, Control-K 014 12 0x0c FF, form feed, NP, Control-L 015 13 0x0d CR, carriage return, Control-M 016 14 0x0e SO, Control-N 017 15 0x0f SI, Control-O 020 16 0x10 DLE, Control-P 021 17 0x11 DC1, XON, Control-Q 022 18 0x12 DC2, Control-R 023 19 0x13 DC3, XOFF, Control-S 024 20 0x14 DC4, Control-T 025 21 0x15 NAK, Control-U 026 22 0x16 SYN, Control-V 027 23 0x17 ETB, Control-W 030 24 0x18 CAN, Control-X 031 25 0x19 EM, Control-Y 032 26 0x1a SUB, Control-Z 033 27 0x1b ESC, escape 034 28 0x1c FS 035 29 0x1d GS 036 30 0x1e RS 037 31 0x1f US 040 32 0x20 space 041 33 0x21 !, exclamation mark 042 34 0x22 ", double quote 043 35 0x23 #, hash 044 36 0x24 $, dollar 045 37 0x25 %, percent 046 38 0x26 &, ampersand 047 39 0x27 ', quote 050 40 0x28 (, open parenthesis 051 41 0x29 ), close parenthesis 052 42 0x2a *, asterisk 053 43 0x2b +, plus 054 44 0x2c ,, comma 055 45 0x2d -, minus 056 46 0x2e ., full stop 057 47 0x2f /, oblique stroke 060 48 0x30 0, zero 061 49 0x31 1 062 50 0x32 2 063 51 0x33 3 064 52 0x34 4 065 53 0x35 5 066 54 0x36 6 067 55 0x37 7 070 56 0x38 8 071 57 0x39 9 072 58 0x3a :, colon 073 59 0x3b ;, semicolon 074 60 0x3c < , less than 075 61 0x3d =, equals 076 62 0x3e >, greater than 077 63 0x3f ?, question mark 0100 64 0x40 @, commercial at 0101 65 0x41 A 0102 66 0x42 B 0103 67 0x43 C 0104 68 0x44 D 0105 69 0x45 E 0106 70 0x46 F 0107 71 0x47 G 0110 72 0x48 H 0111 73 0x49 I 0112 74 0x4a J 0113 75 0x4b K 0114 76 0x4c L 0115 77 0x4d M 0116 78 0x4e N 0117 79 0x4f O 0120 80 0x50 P 0121 81 0x51 Q 0122 82 0x52 R 0123 83 0x53 S 0124 84 0x54 T 0125 85 0x55 U 0126 86 0x56 V 0127 87 0x57 W 0130 88 0x58 X 0131 89 0x59 Y 0132 90 0x5a Z 0133 91 0x5b [, open square bracket 0134 92 0x5c , backslash 0135 93 0x5d ], close square bracket 0136 94 0x5e ^, caret 0137 95 0x5f _, underscore 0140 96 0x60 ', back quote 0141 97 0x61 a 0142 98 0x62 b 0143 99 0x63 c 0144 100 0x64 d 0145 101 0x65 e 0146 102 0x66 f 0147 103 0x67 g 0150 104 0x68 h 0151 105 0x69 i 0152 106 0x6a j 0153 107 0x6b k 0154 108 0x6c l 0155 109 0x6d m 0156 110 0x6e n 0157 111 0x6f o 0160 112 0x70 p 0161 113 0x71 q 0162 114 0x72 r 0163 115 0x73 s 0164 116 0x74 t 0165 117 0x75 u 0166 118 0x76 v 0167 119 0x77 w 0170 120 0x78 x 0171 121 0x79 y 0172 122 0x7a z 0173 123 0x7b {, open curly bracket 0174 124 0x7c |, vertical bar 0175 125 0x7d }, close curly bracket 0176 126 0x7e ASCII character table, tilde 0177 127 0x7f delete See NUL, SOH, STX, ETX, ETX, EOT, ENQ, ACK, BEL, BS, HT, line feed, VT, FF, CR, SO, SI, DLE, XON, DC1, DC2, DC3, DC4, NAK, SYN, ETB, CAN, EM, SUB, ESC, FS, GS, RS, US, space, exclamation mark, double quote, hash, dollar, percent, ampersand, quote, open parenthesis, {close parenthesis}, asterisk, plus, comma, minus, {full stop}, oblique stroke, colon, semicolon, less than, equals, greater than, question mark, commercial at, open square bracket, backslash, close square bracket, caret, underscore, back quote, open curly bracket, vertical bar, close curly bracket, tilde, delete. (1996-06-24)

<character> The 7-bit version of ASCII, which preceded (and is the basis for) 8-bit versions such as Latin-1, MacASCII and later, even larger coded character sets such as Unicode. US-ASCII is defined in Standard ANSI X3.4-1986, "US-ASCII. Coded Character Set - 7-Bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange". (1998-10-18)

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

<jargon, programming> /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a". [Jargon File] (1999-04-08)

ASCII ( (listen) ASS-kee),^: 6 abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, although most of those support many additional characters.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) prefers the name US-ASCII for this character encoding.

ASCII is one of the IEEE milestones.

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)

American Standard Code of Information Interchange

ASCII art