What are the differences between ASCII and Unicode in Python?

ASCII, created in the 1960s, standardized text representation in computers. It uses 7 bits per character, offering 128 unique combinations for English letters, digits, punctuation, and control characters. In Python, you can work with ASCII using string literals and the `ord()` function. For example, `ord('A')` returns 65, the ASCII code for 'A'.

ASCII and Unicode are character sets for computers. Imagine ASCII like a small alphabet, only for English letters, numbers, and some symbols. Unicode is a super-alphabet that can write everything, from any language to emojis! Python uses Unicode by default, so you can write anything you want. Let's see an example: € (Euro symbol) ASCII (limited characters) shows a weird character because it can't represent Euro. Unicode (all characters) shows the correct Euro symbol (€). #Happy_Learning

ASCII is a character encoding standard used in Python and other programming languages. ➡️ It was originally designed to represent 128 English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. ➡️ This includes uppercase and lowercase English letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters. ➡️ ASCII is limited to these 128 symbols and does not support characters from other languages or special symbols, making it less versatile for global applications. It is, however, simple and widely compatible, making it suitable for basic text data that strictly involves English characters.

In Python, ASCII and Unicode are two character encoding standards used to represent text. 33 non-printable control characters, 95 printable characters, including digits, lowercase and uppercase English letters, punctuation marks, and a few special symbols. Unicode is a comprehensive standard designed to cover all characters from all writing systems, symbols, and control characters. It includes characters from virtually all languages, including modern and ancient scripts, as well as a vast array of symbols, emoji, and other textual elements.

Unicode is more comprehensive than ASCII as it covers a lot more and is designed to support all the different languages and their unique symbols. On the other hand, it takes more storage than ASCII. However, It does allow you to communicate across the globe as it can handle almost any language. It does have different types of encoding such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, with UTF-8 being the most common on the web.

Unicode is a comprehensive character encoding system designed to support text representation from all languages and a myriad of symbols, making it vastly more expansive than ASCII. ➡️ It can encode over 1 million characters, covering scripts from around the globe, emojis, historic scripts, and various symbol sets. ➡️ Unlike ASCII’s limited 7-bit encoding, Unicode uses different encoding forms like UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 to accommodate its extensive range of characters. ➡️ UTF-8, the most commonly used form, is particularly beneficial in Python, as it offers backward compatibility with ASCII while allowing for the efficient encoding of a vast array of additional characters.

Python 2 utilizes ASCII, while Python 3 strings are based on Unicode. If you want to set a different encoding from the console, you can set below console variables: PYTHONIOENCODING="utf-16-be"

Python is quite comprehensive with the encoding and allows you to encode in both ASCII and Unicode at the same time. Just be aware the default settings for Python 2 and Python 3 are different as Python 3 has Unicode as the default encoding. Unicode encoding is more comprehensive as it has more characters and can cover almost all the language representations across the globe. So, while working with ASCII in Python you need to explicitly use the methods to encode and decode into ASCII.

1. Number of Characters 2. Size 3. Character Set 4. Subset 5. Encoding In conclusion, while ASCII is sufficient for texts that use only the basic English alphabet, Unicode is more versatile and can represent characters from many different languages and scripts, making it more suitable for international use.