Introduction

• All information must be rendered into binary in

order to be stored on a computer.
• Besides numbers, almost all applications must
store characters and string information.
• Images are pervasive in today’s internet world and
must be rendered in binary to be handled by
internet browsers.

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Introduction
• Examples
Real World Computer
Data Input device Data

Dear Mom: Keyboard 10110010…

Digital
10110010…
camera

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Format must be appropriate
• The internal representation must be
appropriate for the type of processing to
take place (e.g., text, images, sound)

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Standards Organizations
• ISO – International Standards Organization
• CSA – Canadian Standards Association
• ANSI – American National Standards
Institute
• IEEE – Institute for Electrical and
Electronics Engineers
• Etc.

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Examples of Standards
Type of Data Standards
Alphanumeric ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode

Image JPEG, GIF, PCX, TIFF

Motion picture MPEG-2, Quick Time

Sound Sound Blaster, WAV, AU

Outline graphics/fonts PostScript, TrueType, PDF

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Why Standards?
• Standard are “arbitrary”
• They exist because they are
– Convenient
– Efficient
– Flexible
– Appropriate
– Etc.

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Alphanumeric Data
• Problem: Distinguishing between the number 123
(one hundred and twenty-three) and the characters
“123” (one, two, three)
• Four standards for representing letters (alpha) and
numbers
– BCD – Binary-coded decimal
– ASCII – American standard code for information
interchange
– EBCDIC – Extended binary-coded decimal interchange
code
– Unicode

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Standard Alphanumeric Formats
• BCD Next 2 slides
• ASCII
• EBCDIC
• Unicode

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD)
▪ Decimal numbers are more natural to humans.
Binary numbers are natural to computers. Quite
expensive to convert between the two.
▪ If little calculation is involved, we can use some
coding schemes for decimal numbers.
▪ One such scheme is BCD, also known as the 8421
code.
▪ Represent each decimal digit as a 4-bit binary
code.

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD)
• Four bits per digit Digit Bit pattern
0 0000

Note: the following 1 0001

bit patterns are not 2 0010
used: 3 0011
4 0100
1010
5 0101
1011
1100 6 0110
1101 7 0111
1110 8 1000
1111 9 1001

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Example
• 709310 = ? (in BCD)

7 0 9 3

0111 0000 1001 0011

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Binary-Coded-Decimal (BCD)

▪ Examples:
(234)10 = (0010 0011 0100)BCD
(7093)10 = (0111 0000 1001 0011)BCD
(1000 0110)BCD = (86)10
(1001 0100 0111 0010)BCD = (9472)10
Notes: BCD is not equivalent to binary.
Example: (234)10 = (11101010)2

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Standard Alphanumeric Formats
• BCD
• ASCII Next 22 slides
• EBCDIC
• Unicode

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 The Problem
• Representing text strings, such as
“Hello, world”, in a computer

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Codes and Characters
• Each character is coded as a byte
• Most common coding system is ASCII
(Pronounced ass-key)
• ASCII = American National Standard Code
for Information Interchange
• Defined in ANSI document X3.4-1977

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 ASCII Features
• 7-bit code
• 8th bit is unused (or used for a parity bit)
• 27 = 128 codes
• Two general types of codes:
– 95 are “Graphic” codes (displayable on a
console)
– 33 are “Control” codes (control features of the
console or communications channel)

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 ASCII Chart

ENG-1204 Md. Manowarul Islam, Dept. of CSE, JnU

ENG-1204 Md. Manowarul Islam, Dept. of CSE, JnU
 Most significant bit

Least significant bit

ENG-1204 Md. Manowarul Islam, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 e.g., ‘a’ = 1100001

ENG-1204 Md. Manowarul Islam, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 “Hello, world” Example

Binary Hexadecima Decima

01001000 l l
H = = 48 = 72
e = 01100101 = 65 = 101
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
o = 01101111 = 6F = 111
, = 00101100 = 2C = 44
= 00100000 = 20 = 32
w = 01110111 = 77 = 119
o = 01100111 = 67 = 103
r = 01110010 = 72 = 114
l = 01101100 = 6C = 108
d = 01100100 = 64 = 100

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Standard Alphanumeric Formats
• BCD
• ASCII
• EBCDIC Next 1 slides
• Unicode

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 EBCDIC
• Extended BCD Interchange Code
(pronounced ebb’-se-dick)
• 8-bit code
• Developed by IBM
• Rarely used today
• IBM mainframes only

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Standard Alphanumeric Formats
• BCD
• ASCII
• EBCDIC
• Unicode Next 2 slides

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Unicode
• 16-bit standard
• Developed by a consortia
• Intended to supercede older 7- and 8-bit
codes

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU

 Keyboard Input
• Key (“scan”) codes are converted to ASCII
• ASCII code sent to host computer
• Received by the host as a “stream” of data
• Stored in buffer
• Processed
• Etc.

Tanvir Ahammad, Dept. of CSE, JnU