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Internet explained - Glossary

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)

1. The common name for the industry-standard method for encoding English-language character symbols and numbers ("glyphs") plus a selection of punctuation and control symbols into computer bit patterns ("codes"). Now seen almost exclusively in the abbreviated form.
   ASCII is the universal coding scheme for English-language text on the Net, but some mainframes still use an alternate encoding scheme developed by IBM. International alphabets also have their own standards, and some companies have "extended" ASCII with their own larger character sets.
2. A designation for files that contain only printable text in ASCII encoding--that is, files containing letters, numbers, punctuation, and a minimum set of control characters, such as carriage return and formfeed.
   Although often used as a synonym for text files, the range of ASCII files includes some with complex internal formatting as well as some with simple streams of textual data.
3. As applied to file transfers, ones set up to expect only ASCII characters--which require only 7 bits for each character rather than the 8 bits per character needed for a binary file, such as a program.
   In the early days of networking, many connections transmitted only 7 bits per character, so this became the default for file transfers using such services as File Transfer Protocol (FTP)--unless you specified a binary transfer. These days, most links provide 8 bits and work equally well with either type of file.