Coded character set, also known as character set refers to a group or set of characters used by an encoding system. It refers to the mapping from a group of integers to a group of characters. The mapping is generally bijective (i.e. 1:1). There are many standard coded character sets used by programmers in every software application development enterprise. The most widely used is ASCII, with Unicode becoming more common nowadays.
A coded character set generally includes digits, letters, control codes, punctuation and various typographic and mathematical symbols and other characters. Each character in the set is denoted by a unique character code, also called as "code position". For example, the character "A" is denoted by the character code 65. Let us learn more about ASCII and Unicode character set.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange):
It is a coding standard used for interchanging information. It has definition for 128 characters of which 94 are printable characters 33 are obsolete, non-printing characters that affect text processing. The rapid spread of computer technology throughout the world resulted in development of variations of ASCII, mostly classed as "ASCII extensions".
Unicode:
From a simple offshore software development company to industry leaders like IBM, HP and Microsoft, every enterprise is well-versed with the term Unicode. It is a computer industry standard that provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the language, platform or program is. It is always required by modern programming standards such as JavaScript, XML, CORBA, WML etc. most operating systems and almost all modern browsers support Unicode.
When you outsource software development to a software development company, always make sure that it incorporates Unicode into its applications. Software development services in India take much care about this aspect. It incorporates Unicode into its multi-tiered applications, thereby reducing costs in development of software. Unicode also helps companies to target a single software product across multiple platforms, languages and countries without the need of any re-engineering.