The ASCII table, an abbreviation for American Standard Code for
Information Interchange, utilizes a 7-bit character encoding system to represent 128 unique characters. These include both control and printable characters. The table is composed of 32 control characters (ranging from 0-31) used for text formatting management, and 96 printable characters (ranging from 32-127). The latter includes the English alphabet, digits, and common punctuation marks.
ASCII control characters
(character code 0-31) The first 32 characters in the ASCII-table are unprintable control codes and are used to control peripherals such as printers.
DEC OCT HEX Symbol Description
0 000 00 ␀ Null character 1 001 01 ␁ Start of Heading 2 002 02 ␂ Start of Text 3 003 03 ␃ End of Text 4 004 04 ␄ End of Transmission 5 005 05 ␅ Enquiry 6 006 06 ␆ Acknowledge 7 007 07 ␇ Bell, Alert 8 010 08 ␈ Backspace 9 011 09 ␉ Horizontal Tab 10 012 0A ␊ Line Feed 11 013 0B ␋ Vertical Tabulation 12 014 0C ␌ Form Feed DEC OCT HEX Symbol Description 13 015 0D ␍ Carriage Return 14 016 0E ␎ Shift Out 15 017 0F ␏ Shift In 16 020 10 ␐ Data Link Escape 17 021 11 ␑ Device Control One (XON) 18 022 12 ␒ Device Control Two 19 023 13 ␓ Device Control Three (XOFF) 20 024 14 ␔ Device Control Four 21 025 15 ␕ Negative Acknowledge 22 026 16 ␖ Synchronous Idle 23 027 17 ␗ End of Transmission Block 24 030 18 ␘ Cancel 25 031 19 ␙ End of medium 26 032 1A ␚ Substitute 27 033 1B ␛ Escape 28 034 1C ␜ File Separator 29 035 1D ␝ Group Separator 30 036 1E ␞ Record Separator 31 037 1F ␟ Unit Separator ASCII printable characters (character code 32-127) Codes 32-127 are common for all the different variations of the ASCII table, they are called printable characters, represent letters, digits, punctuation marks, and a few miscellaneous symbols. You will find almost every character on your keyboard. Character 127 represents the command DEL.