ASCII

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Stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." ASCII is the universal standard for the numerical codes computers use to represent all upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and puctuation. Without ASCII, each type of computer would use a different way of representing letters and numbers, causing major chaos for computer programmers (allowing them even less sleep than they already get).

ASCII makes is possible for text to be represented the same on a Pentium-based PC in Minneapolis as it is on a Power Mac Cube in Paris, France. There are 128 standard ASCII codes, each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number (because 2^7 = 128).

• Definition from the Sharpened Glossary

AsciiArt
AsciiCodes
Character_Codes
Figlet
CowSay

	This is the JargonFile (V4.00) entry for ASCII - Next: ASCII art, Prev: asbestos longjohns
:ASCII:: /askee/ /n./ [acronym: American Standard Code for Information Interchange] The predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. The modern version uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including an early version of ASCII) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters -- a major win -- but it did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S or the ae-ligature which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It could be much worse. See [[EBCDIC]] to understand how. Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names -- some formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII characters are collected here. See also individual entries for bang, excl, open, ques, semi, shriek, splat, twiddle, and Yu-Shiang Whole Fish. This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL. The abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close" respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information.! Common: bang; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier." Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime.# Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; <square>, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat.$ Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].% Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare: [double-oh-seven].& Common: <ampersand>; amper; and. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh(1)); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this ampersand; what could be sillier?] Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation mark>; <acute accent>.( ) Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear.* Common: star; [[[splat]]]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see glob); Nathan Hale.+ Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection]., Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].- Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak; bithorpe.. Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot]./ Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].: Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].; Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid], pit-thwong.< > Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/into, towards; read from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from UNIX); [angle/right angle].
* (text is auto-included via JargonExtension by mutante using jargon with VERSION 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996 - JargonFile by Eric S. Raymond is in the public domain)