ASCII Character Code

ASCII is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and it is pronounced as "ask-key".

The ASCII character set was established as a standard character set to enable compatibility between various types of data processing equipment. Since its inception in the 1960s, ASCII has become the standard code for microcomputer equipment and electronic devices.

The standard ASCII character set is a 7-bit character set containing 128 characters ranging from zero through 127 assigned to letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and the most common special characters e.g. @. The first 32 are non printing characters that were originally developed for use with teletypers. The basic ASCII charachter set is shown in the table below.

The Extended ASCII Character Set consists of the basic character code described above, with an additional 128 characters from 128 through 255 representing additional special, mathematical, graphic, and foreign characters.

ASCII Character Code Table

The following table details the 128 ASCII character code set in both decimal, and hexidecimal format.

ASCII Code Table
Decimal	Hex	Character	Description
0	0		Null
1	1		Start of Heading
2	2		Start of Text
3	3		End of Text
4	4		End of Transmission
5	5		Enquiry
6	6		Acknowledge
7	7		Bell
8	8		Backspace
9	9		Horizontal Tab
10	A		New Line
11	B		Vertical Tab
12	C		New Page
13	D		Carriage Return
14	E		Shift Out
15	F		Shift In
16	10		Data Link Escape
17	11		Device Control No 1
18	12		Device Control No 2
19	13		Device Control No 3
20	14		Device Control No 4
21	15		Negative Acknowledge
22	16		Synchronous Idle
23	17		End of Transmission
24	18		Cancel
25	19		End of Medium
26	1A		Substitute
27	1B		Escape
28	1C		File Separator
29	1D		Group Separator
30	1E		Record Separator
31	1F		Unit Separator
32	20		Space
33	21	!	Exclamation Mark
34	22	"	Double Quotes
35	23	#	Hash
36	24	$	Dollar
37	25	%	Percent
38	26	&	Ampersand
39	27	'	Single Quote
40	28	(	Open Bracket
41	29	)	Close Bracket
42	2A	*	Star
43	2B	+	Plus symbol
44	2C	,	Comma
45	2D	-	Minus symbol
46	2E	.	Full Stop
47	2F	/
48	30	0
49	31	1
50	32	2
51	33	3
52	34	4
53	35	5
54	36	6
55	37	7
56	38	8
57	39	9
58	3A	:
59	3B	;
60	3C	<
61	3D	=
62	3E	>
63	3F	?
64	40	@
65	41	A
66	42	B
67	43	C
68	44	D
69	45	E
70	46	F
71	47	G
72	48	H
73	49	I
74	4A	J
75	4B	K
76	4C	L
77	4D	M
78	4E	N
79	4F	O
80	50	P
81	51	Q
82	52	R
83	53	S
84	54	T
85	55	U
86	56	V
87	57	W
88	58	X
89	59	Y
90	5A	Z
91	5B	[
92	5C	\
93	5D	]
94	5E	^
95	5F	_	Underscore
96	60	`	Apostrophe
97	61	a
98	62	b
99	63	c
100	64	d
101	65	e
102	66	f
103	67	g
104	68	h
105	69	i
106	6A	j
107	6B	k
108	6C	l
109	6D	m
110	6E	n
111	6F	o
112	70	p
113	71	q
114	72	r
115	73	s
116	74	t
117	75	u
118	76	v
119	77	w
120	78	x
121	79	y
122	7A	z
123	7B	{
124	7C	\|
125	7D	}
126	7E	~
127	7F		DEL

ASCII ART

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable ASCII characters. ASCII art was invented, in large part, because early printers often lacked graphics ability and thus, characters were used in place of graphic marks.

An example of ASCII art is shown below.

ASCII art
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