coded character set


coded character set

[′kōd·əd ′kar·ik·tər ‚set] (computer science) A set of characters together with the code assigned to each character for computer use.

coded character set

(character, standard)A mapping from a set of integers to aset of characters. This mapping is generally 1:1 (i.e.,bijective), for example, the code position 65 in ASCIImaps only to "A", and it's the only position that maps to "A".

There are several standard coded character sets, the mostwidely used is ASCII, generally in its Latin-1 dialect,with Unicode becoming slowly more common; while EBCDIC andBaudot are extinct except in legacy systems.

A coded character set may include letters, digits,punctuation, control codes, various mathematical andtypographic symbols, and other characters. Each character inthe set is represented by a unique character code (or "code position").