ASCII

Last updated Jun 23, 2022

• Type atom
• Status good

ASCII uses $7$ bits, i.e. $2^7 = 128$ possible states, to encode letters, numbers, symbols, and special commands (like carriage return or newline). $95$ out of $128$ states are used to encode printable characters, while the remaining $33$ states encode non-printable characters. ¹

The first $128$ bit strings in UTF-8 are the ASCII characters.