Character set
What does Character set mean?
Definition
A character set, also known as a code page, is a mapping of characters to specific code values. A character set defines a collection of characters, such as letters, digits, punctuation marks, and symbols, and assigns a unique code value to each character. The code values are used to represent the characters in a computer system, such as in memory, in a file, or in a network transmission.
There are many different character sets in use, each with its own set of characters and code values. The ASCII character set, for example, provides a basic set of 128 characters, including upper- and lowercase letters, digits, and punctuation marks, and assigns each character a unique code value between 0 and 127.
Unicode is a widely used character set that provides support for a much larger range of characters and scripts, including characters from many different languages and symbols. Unicode uses a variable-length encoding system, which allows each character to be represented using one or more code values, and provides support for up to 1,114,112 characters.