difference between ASCII and Unicode?

Here’s a comparison of ASCII and Unicode:

### **ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)**

1. **Character Set**: ASCII uses a 7-bit character set, which defines 128 characters, including control characters, digits, uppercase and lowercase letters, and punctuation marks.

2. **Encoding Range**: ASCII supports characters in the range of 0 to 127. It does not include characters from non-English languages or special symbols beyond this range.

3. **Standardization**: ASCII is a standard developed in the 1960s and primarily designed for English text. It has limited use for representing characters from other languages or scripts.

4. **Storage**: Each ASCII character is represented by a single byte (though only 7 bits are used, the 8th bit is often padded with zeros).

5. **Compatibility**: ASCII is compatible with older systems and protocols but is limited in its ability to represent a diverse set of characters used globally.

### **Unicode**

1. **Character Set**: Unicode supports a vast number of characters from virtually all writing systems in use today, including scripts for different languages, symbols, and emojis. It provides a unique code point for each character.

2. **Encoding Range**: Unicode covers over 1.1 million possible characters and is designed to accommodate characters beyond the ASCII range, including thousands of symbols and characters from multiple languages.

3. **Standardization**: Unicode is a comprehensive standard developed in the 1990s and is continually updated to include new characters and scripts, providing a uniform standard for text representation globally.

4. **Encoding Forms**: Unicode supports multiple encoding forms, such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, which vary in how they represent characters and handle different character ranges. UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII.

5. **Compatibility**: Unicode is designed to be compatible with a wide range of modern systems and software, enabling consistent representation and processing of text across different platforms and languages.

In summary, ASCII is limited in scope and character range, while Unicode provides a comprehensive and flexible system for representing text in a global context.