Character encoding is the process of converting characters into a format that can be stored and transmitted electronically. Every character, whether it’s a letter, number, or symbol, has a corresponding numerical value. Character encoding schemes assign these numerical values to characters, allowing computers to store and process text data.
There are several different character encoding schemes, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of the most common character encoding schemes include ASCII, Unicode, and UTF-8. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a 7-bit character encoding scheme that supports 128 characters, including the English alphabet, numbers, and some punctuation marks. Unicode is a 16-bit character encoding scheme that supports over 1 million characters, including characters from all major languages. UTF-8 (8-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a variable-length character encoding scheme that is compatible with ASCII and Unicode.