Acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A coding scheme using 7 or 8 bits that assigns numeric values to up to 256 characters, including letters, numerals, punctuation marks, control characters, and other symbols. ASCII was developed in 1968 to standardize data transmission among disparate hardware and software systems and is built into most minicomputers and all PCs. ASCII is divided into two sets: 128 characters (standard ASCII) and an additional 128 (extended ASCII). See also ASCII file, character, character code, control character, extended ASCII, standard ASCII. Compare EBCDIC.
(Computer science) American Standard Code for Information Interchange; a code for information exchange between computers made by different companies; a string of 7 binary digits represents each character; used in most microcomputers.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A seven or eight bit code used to represent alphanumeric characters. It is the standard code used for communications between data processing systems and associated equipment.
(in computers) standard system for coding characters etc. in binary form.
(acronym for American standard code for information interchange) in computing, a coding system in which numbers are assigned to letters, digits, and punctuation symbols. Although computers work in binary number code, ASCII numbers are usually quoted as decimal or hexadecimal numbers. For example, the decimal number 45 (binary 0101101) represents a hyphen, and 65 (binary 1000001) a capital A. The first 32 codes are used for control functions, such as carriage return and backspace.
Strictly speaking, ASCII is a 7-bit binary code, allowing 128 different characters to be represented, but an eighth bit is often used to provide parity or to allow for extra characters. The system is widely used for the storage of text and for the transmission of data between computers.

In an FTP client program, the command that instructs the FTP server to send or receive files as ASCII text. See also ASCII, FTP client. Compare binary2.