Character encoding and decoding
Character encoding and decoding are fundamental processes that deal with the representation and interpretation of characters in digital systems. Let's break this down: 1. Character Encoding The process of converting characters (letters, numbers, symbols) into a specific format (often binary) that computers can understand and store. Examples of character encoding standards include: - ASCII: A 7-bit encoding for basic English characters. - UTF-8: A variable-length encoding supporting all Unicode characters, commonly used on the web. - UTF-16: Uses 2 bytes (16 bits) for most characters but can use more for special characters. - ISO-8859-1: Also known as Latin-1, supports Western European languages. Purpose : To ensure compatibility and proper storage/transmission of text data across different systems. 2. Character Decoding The reverse process of encoding: converting the encoded binary data back into human-readable characters. Decoding must use the same encoding ...