Paper Name: Digital Electronics

Paper Code: BCAC-102

Lecture#11
Alphanumeric codes
Dr. Dibyendu Kumar Pal ,
M.Sc.(Applied Maths), MCA, Ph.D.
HOD & Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Application
Asansol Engineering College, West Bengal, India.
 Lecture Outline
Alphanumeric codes
 ASCII CODE

 HOLLERITH CODE

 Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code

(EBCDIC)

 UNICODE
 Alphanumeric codes

Alphanumeric codes, also called character codes, are

binary codes used to represent alphanumeric data.
The codes write alphanumeric data, including letters of the
alphabet, numbers, mathematical symbols and punctuation
marks, in a form that is understandable and process able by a
computer.
Alphanumeric, also known as alphameric, simply refers to the
type of Latin and Arabic characters representing the numbers
0 - 9, the letters A - Z (both uppercase and lowercase), and
some common symbols such as @ # * and &.
 American Standard-Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII)
The American Standard-Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII) pronounced "as-kee" is a 7-bit code based on the
ordering of the English alphabets. The ASCII codes are used
to represent alphanumeric data in computer input/output.
Historically, ASCII developed from telegraphic codes. It was
first published as a standard in 1967. It was subsequently
updated and many versions of it were launched with the
most recent update in 1986. Since it is a seven-bit code, it
can almost represent 128 characters.
These include 95 printable characters including 26
upper-case letters (A to Z), 26 lowercase letters (a to z),
10 numerals (0 to 9) and 33 special characters such as
mathematical symbols, space character etc. It also
defines codes for 33 non-printing obsolete characters
except for carriage return and/or line feed. The below
table lists the 7 bit ASCII code containing the 95
printable characters.
Table-I
The format of ASCII code for each character is X 6, X5, X4, X3,
X2, Xl, X0 where each X is 0 or 1. For instance, letter D is coded
as 1000100. For making reading easier, we leave space as
follows: 1000100.
Similarly, from the above table, we see that letter 'A' has
X6 X5X4 of 100 and X3 X2 Xl Xo of 0001 (A). Similarly, the digit
'9' has X6 X5 X4 values of 011 and X3 X2 Xl X0 of 1001 so the
ASCII-7 code for digit 9 is 0111001.

More examples are:

The ASCll-7 code for 'd' is 1100100 as seen from the table I.
The ASCll-7 code for '+' is 0101011 as seen from the table I.
 HOLLERITH CODE
In 1896, Herman Hollerith formed a company called the
Tabulating Machine Company. This company developed a
line of machines that used punched cards for tabulation.
After a number of mergers, this company was formed into
the IBM, Inc. We often refer to the punched-cards used in
computer systems as Hollerith cards and the 12-bit code
used on a punched-card is called the Hollerith code.
A Hollerith string is a sequence of l2-bit characters; they are
encoded as two ASCII characters, containing 6 bits each. The
first character contains punches 12,0,2,4,6,8 and the second
character contains punches 11, 1,3,5, 7, 9. Interleaving the two
characters gives the original 12 bits. To make the characters
printable on ASCII terminals, bit 7 is always set to 0 and bit 6
is said to the complement of bit 5. These two bits are ignored
when reading Hollerith cards.
Today, as punched cards are mostly obsolete and replaced
with other storage medias so the Hollerith code is rendered
obsolete.
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
(EBCDIC)

The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code

(EBCDIC) pronounced as "ebi-si disk" is another frequently
used code by computers for transferring alphanumeric data.
It is 8-bit code in which the numerals (0-9) are represented
by the 8421 BCD code preceded by 1111. Since it is a 8-bit
code, it can almost represent 28 (= 256) different characters
which include both lowercase and uppercase letters in
addition to various other symbols and commands .
EBCDIC was designed by IBM corp. so it is basically used by
several IBM· models. In this code, we do not use a straight
binary sequence for representing characters, as was in the case
of ASCII code. Since it is a 8-bit code, so it can be easily
grouped into groups of 4 so as to represent in arm of
hexadecimal digits. By using the hexadecimal number system
notation, the amount of digits used to represent various
characters and special characters using EBCDIC code is
reduced in volume of one is to four.
Thus 8-bit binary code could be reduced to 2 hexadecimal
digits which are easier to decode if we want to view the
internal representation in memory. The above table lists the
EBCDIC code for certain characters.
Read the above table as you read the graph. Suppose you want
to search for EBCDIC code for letter 'A’. To that case, the
value of X3 X2 Xl X0 bits is 0001 and value X7 X6 X5 X4 bits is
1100.
Therefore, EBCDIC code for letter 'A’ is 11000001(A).
Similarly, the EBCDIC code for 'B' is 11000010(B).
The EBCDIC code '=' is 01111110
The EBCDIC code for '$' is 0101 1011
 UNICODE

The ASCII and EBCDIC encodings and their variants that we

have studied suffer from some limitations.
 These encodings do not have a sufficient number of
characters to be able to encode alphanumeric data of all
forms, scripts and languages. As a result, they do not
permit multilingual computer processing.

 These encoding suffer from incompatibility. For example:

code 7A (in hex) represents the lowercase letter 'Z' in
ASCII code and the semicolon sign ';' in EBCDIC code.
To overcome these limitations, UNICODE also known as
universal code was developed jointly by the Unicode
Consortium and the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO). The Unicode is a 16-bit code so it
can represent 65536 different characters. It is the most
complete character encoding scheme that allows text of all
forms and languages to be encoded for use by computers. In
addition to multilingual support, it also supports a
comprehensive set of mathematical and technical symbols,
greatly simplifying any scientific information interchange .
 UNICODE has a number of uses

 It is increasingly being used for internal processing and storage of

text. Window NT and its descendants, Java environment, Mac OS all
follow Unicode as the sole internal character encoding.
 All World Wide Web consortium recommendations have used
Unicode as their document character set since HTML 4.0.
 It partially addresses the new line problem that occurs when trying
to read a text file on different platforms. It defines a large number of
characters that can be recognized as line terminators.
 Unicode is currently being adopted by top computer industry leaders
like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Sun, SAP and many more in their
products.
Thank You