ASCII AND EBCDIC CODES

How Computers
OFF Represent
ON Data
OFF
ON
OR = 1 bit
0 1
= 1 Byte
0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0
OR
= 1 Byte
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

Bit (Binary digit) – On or off state of electric current;

considered the basic unit of information; represented by 1s and
0s (binary numbers)
Byte – Eight bits grouped together to represent a character (an
alphabetical letter, a number, or a punctuation symbol); 256
different combinations
 Bits
1000 bits = 1 kilobit (kb)
1,000,000 bits = 1 megabit (mb)
1,000,000,000 bits = 1 gigabit (gb)

Kilobits per second (Kbps), megabits per second

(Mbps), and gigabits per second (Gbps) are terms
that describe units of data used in measuring data
transfer rates
 Example: 56 Kbps modem
Bytes

8 bits = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
1,048,576 Bytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)
1,043,741,824 Bytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
1,099,511,627,776 Bytes = 1 Terabyte (TB)

Kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and terabyte

are terms that describe large units of data used
in measuring data storage
Example: 20 GB hard disk
Representing Characters: Character Codes
Character codes translate numerical data into characters readable
by humans
 American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII) – Eight bits equals one character; used by
minicomputers and personal computers
 Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
(EBCDIC) – Eight bits equals one character; used by mainframe
computers
 Unicode – Sixteen bits equals one character; over 65,000
combinations; used for foreign language symbols

ASCII =4
0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0

EBCDIC =4
1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0
Codes and Characters
 The problem:
 Representing text strings, such as
“Hello, world”, in a computer
 Each character is coded as a byte ( = 8 bits)
 Most common coding system is ASCII
 ASCII = American National Standard Code for Information
Interchange
 ASCII
 The American Standard Code for Information
Interchange is a standard seven-bit code that was
proposed by ANSI (American National Standards
Institute) in 1963, and finalized in 1968.
 ASCII, pronounced "ask-key", is the common code
for microcomputer . The standard ASCII character set
consists of 128 decimal numbers ranging from zero
through 127 assigned to letters, numbers, punctuation
marks, and the most common special characters (see
ASCII Table).
 ASCII
 Computers can only understand
numbers, so an ASCII code is the
numerical representation of a character
such as 'a' or '@' or an action of some
sort.
ASCII Features
 7-bit code
 8th bit is unused (or used for a parity bit)
 27 = 128 codes
 Two general types of codes:
 95 are “Graphic” codes (displayable on a console)
 33 are “Control” codes (control features of the console or
communications channel)
 Most significant bit
000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

Least significant bit

 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

i.e. ‘a’ = 11000012 = 9710 = 6116

 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

95 Graphic codes
 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

33 Control codes
 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

Alphabetic codes
“Hello, world” Example
Binary Hexadecimal Decimal
H = 01001000 = 48 = 72
e = 01100101 = 65 = 101
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
o = 01101111 = 6F = 111
, = 00101100 = 2C = 44
= 00100000 = 20 = 32
w = 01110111 = 77 = 119
o = 01100111 = 67 = 103
r = 01110010 = 72 = 114
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
d = 01100100 = 64 = 100

Note: 12 characters – requires 12 bytes

Each character requires 1 byte
 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

Numeric codes
“4+15” Example
Binary Hexadecimal Decimal
4 = 00110100 = 34 = 52
+ = 00101011 = 2B = 43
l = 00110001 = 31 = 49
5 = 00110101 = 35 = 53

“4+15” is “00110100 00101011 00110001 00110101”

or “34162B1631163516”
 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
0000 NULL DLE 0 @ P ` p
0001 SOH DC1 ! 1 A Q a q
0010 STX DC2 " 2 B R b r
0011 ETX DC3 # 3 C S c s
0100 EDT DC4 $ 4 D T d t
0101 ENQ NAK % 5 E U e u
0110 ACK SYN & 6 F V f v
0111 BEL ETB ' 7 G W g w
1000 BS CAN ( 8 H X h x
1001 HT EM ) 9 I Y i y
1010 LF SUB * : J Z j z
1011 VT ESC + ; K [ k {
1100 FF FS , < L \ l |
1101 CR GS - = M ] m }
1110 SO RS . > N ^ n ~
1111 SI US / ? O _ o DEL

Punctuation, etc.
EBCDIC
 Extended BCD Interchange Code
(pronounced ebb’-se-dick)
 8-bit code
 Developed by IBM
 Rarely used today
 IBM mainframes only