8-bit character code

With an 8-bit character code (1 byte) up to 2⁸ = 256 different characters can be represented.

There is a code, which since it was defined in 1963, has been adopted as the standard for data transmission. This code called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) allows up to 128 different characters to be represented, for this it needs 7 bits (2⁷ = 128 permutations). Normally the ASCII code is extended to 8 bits (1 byte) by adding a control bit, called the parity bit.

Although ASCII is the most widely used code, some computer system companies have created their own alphanumeric codes. Such is the case of IBM, whose computers usually use the alphanumeric code called EBCDIC.

The set of alphabetic characters that can be represented in ASCII does not include accented characters or other diacritics. Thus, other ASCII-compatible 8-bit codes arose, specially created to represent languages other than English. ISO 8859-1, for example, has appropriate characters for Spanish, Portuguese, French and other Latin languages.