Define the word ASCII"ASCII" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48"
ASCII \ASCII\ n. [Acronym: American Standard Code for
Information Interchange.](Computers)
1. the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a
code consisting of a set of 128 7-bit combinations used in
digital computers internally, for display purposes, and
for exchanging data between computers. It is very widely
used, but because of the limited number of characters
encoded must be supplemented or replaced by other codes
for encoding special symbols or words in languages other
than English. Also used attributively; -- as, an ASCII
file.
Syn: American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
[PJC]
"Ascii" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48"
Ascii \As"ci*i\, Ascians \As"cians\, n. pl. [L. ascii, pl. of
ascius, Gr. ? without shadow; 'a priv. + ? shadow.]
Persons who, at certain times of the year, have no shadow at
noon; -- applied to the inhabitants of the torrid zone, who
have, twice a year, a vertical sun.
[1913 Webster]
"ASCII" wn "WordNet (r) 2.0"
ASCII
n : (computer science) a code for information exchange between
computers made by different companies; a string of 7
binary digits represents each character; used in most
microcomputers [syn: American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
"ascii" vera "Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)"
ASCII
American Standard Code of Information Interchange
"ASCII" jargon "Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)"
ASCII /as'kee/ n. [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant
character set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version
uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including
early drafts of ASCII prior to June 1961) used fewer. This change
allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters -- a major win -- but it
did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used
in English (such as the German sharp-S or the ae-ligature which is a
letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It could
be much worse. See {EBCDIC} to understand how. A history of ASCII and
its ancestors is at `http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html'.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand
for them. Every character has one or more names -- some formal, some
concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII characters are
collected here. See also individual entries for bang, excl, open,
ques, semi, shriek, splat, twiddle, and Yu-Shiang Whole Fish.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation
guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are
sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in
rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but
rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>.
Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by
INTERCAL. The abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for left/right and
"open/close" respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage
information.
!
Common: bang; pling; excl; not; shriek; ball-bat; . Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow;
hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control.
"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch;
; ; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime.
#
Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex;
[mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; ,
pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat.
$
Common: dollar; . Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash;
string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC);
ding; cache; [big money].
%
Common: percent; ; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
&
Common: ; amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address
(from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background
(from `sh(1)'); pretzel. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what
could be sillier?]
'
Common: single quote; quote; . Rare: prime; glitch;
tick; irk; pop; [spark]; ; .
( )
Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close;
paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r
banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; ; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane];
parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear.
*
Common: star; [splat]; . Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle;
mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see glob); Nathan Hale.
+
Common: ; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].
,
Common: . Rare: ; [tail].
-
Common: dash; ; . Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.
.
Common: dot; point; ; . Rare: radix point;
full stop; [spot].
/
Common: slash; stroke; ; forward slash. Rare: diagonal;
solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].
:
Common: . Rare: dots; [two-spot].
;
Common: ; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid], pit-thwong.
< >
Common: ; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle
bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/into, towards; read from/write
to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from
UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle].
=
Common: ; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe; [half-mesh].
?
Common: query; ; ques. Rare: quiz; whatmark;
[what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.
@
Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
[whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage; .
V
Rare: [book].
[ ]
Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; ; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U turn/U
turn back].
\
Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse
slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; ;
reversed virgule; [backslat].
^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; . Rare: xor
sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of');
fang; pointer (in Pascal).
_
Common: ; underscore; underbar; under. Rare: score;
backarrow; skid; [flatworm].
`
Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote;
; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark];
unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; ; quasiquote.
Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly
bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; .
Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r squirrelly;
[embrace/bracelet]. A balanced pair of these may be called
`curlies'.
|
Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:
; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from UNIX);
[spike].
~
Common: ; squiggle; twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle;
swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].
The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad
idea; {Commonwealth Hackish} has its own, rather more apposite use of
`pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic
happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes call `#' on a
U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S.
usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a `#'
suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually
pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over the
correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which has led to
the ha ha only serious suggestion that it be pronounced `shibboleth'
(see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh).
The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for underline
are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which had
these graphics in those character positions rather than the modern
punctuation characters.
The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same as
tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare
angle brackets).
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#', `$', `>', and
`&' characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different
communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for
hexadecimal constants (in particular, `#' in many assembler-programming
cultures, `$' in the 6502 world, `>' at Texas Instruments, and `&' on
the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See also splat.
The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's
other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more
and more like a serious misfeature as the use of international
networks continues to increase (see software rot). Hardware and
software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII
is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this is
a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to
their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem
by proliferating `national' character sets produce an evolutionary
pressure to use a _smaller_ subset common to all those in use.
"ascii" foldoc "The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)"
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
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