What is the primary purpose of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)?

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

RRB NTPC Graduate Level CBT-I Official Paper (Held On: 06 Jun, 2025 Shift 1)

To design a graphical user interface for operating systems
To enable secure encryption of data for internet transmission
To create a programming language for text-based applications
To define a standardised set of codes for representing text and control characters

Answer 1

The correct answer is To define a standardised set of codes for representing text and control characters.

Key Points

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard used to represent text in computers, telecommunications, and other devices.
Developed in the 1960s, ASCII assigns a unique numerical value (0-127) to letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters.
It enables universal data exchange between different types of devices and software by standardizing text representation.
The ASCII standard includes 128 characters, with codes 0-31 reserved for control characters (e.g., newline, tab) and codes 32-127 for printable characters.
ASCII remains the foundation for many modern encoding systems, including UTF-8 and Unicode, which build upon it for broader character support.

Additional Information

Character Encoding: Character encoding is the process of assigning a numerical value to each character, enabling computers to store and manipulate text.
Control Characters: ASCII codes 0-31 are reserved for non-printable control characters, such as newline (code 10) and tab (code 9).
Extended ASCII: Extended ASCII expands the standard 128 characters to include 256 characters, incorporating additional symbols, accents, and graphical elements.
Unicode: Unicode is a universal character encoding system that supports over 140,000 characters across multiple languages and scripts, building upon ASCII for broader compatibility.
Usage in Computing: ASCII codes are widely used in programming, data transfer, and storage to ensure compatibility across systems.