GCSE > Computer Science > OxfordAQA > GCSE Computer Science > COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Encoding and compression > Characters
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COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Encoding and compression

COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Network topologies

COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Wired and wireless networks, protocols, and layers

COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Threats to computer systems and networks

COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Operating systems and utility software

COMPUTER SYSTEMS: Impact of technology on society

ALGORITHMS AND PROGRAMMING: Types of data

ALGORITHMS AND PROGRAMMING: Producing robust programs

ALGORITHMS AND PROGRAMMING: Designing, creating, and refining algorithms

ALGORITHMS AND PROGRAMMING: Programming languages

ALGORITHMS AND PROGRAMMING: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • A character set is a table that gives each symbol or letter a binary code.
  • ASCII: 7 or 8-bit codes for basic English letters/symbols (e.g. A = 01000001, B = 01000010). This allows for 128 possible characters – mainly English letters, digits, and basic punctuation).
  • Unicode: is much bigger than ASCII and supports many languages and symbols (e.g. Chinese characters, Arabic script, emojis) using more bits, typically 16, 32, or variable-length encoding like UTF-8. 
    • UTF-8 is a popular Unicode encoding that remains compatible with ASCII for standard English text while allowing extra bytes for more complex characters. 
    • Using Unicode enables global text processing, ensuring consistency and compatibility across platforms and languages.

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