Complete ASCII table
The ASCII table forms the bedrock of digital text by giving every basic letter, number, and symbol a specific numeric address. This definitive guide breaks down the full 0–127 standard along with decimal, hexadecimal, and binary values.
Summary
- The standard ASCII table uses numbers from 0 to 127 to represent essential text and control commands across computing systems.
- Decimal and hexadecimal formats provide different ways to read these exact character codes during debugging.
- Extended ASCII ranges from 128 to 255 and changes depending on the regional system or specific encoding standard like Windows-1252.
- Unicode and UTF-8 serve as modern replacements for ASCII because they support global writing systems far beyond 128 symbols.
- Control codes occupy the first thirty-two slots to handle system actions like line breaks instead of showing visible letters.
The ASCII table, which is the foundational dictionary that translates text into numbers for computers, defines 128 codes from 0 to 127 for printable characters and control instructions. This guide shows the full table with decimal, meaning standard base-10 numbers we use every day, and hexadecimal, meaning base-16 numbers commonly used by programmers to represent bytes cleanly.
What is ASCII?
ASCII, short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, maps numbers to characters. It includes letters, digits, punctuation, and control instructions.
Complete ASCII table (0–127)
The table below highlights control codes, which are invisible instructions that tell computers how to format text like hitting enter or tab, covering numbers 0 to 31 and 127. It also covers printable characters from 32 to 126, which are the letters and symbols you can actually see on screen. Use the “Bin” column to compare bits, which are the raw 1s and 0s underlying each code.
Extended ASCII (128–255)
“Extended ASCII” is not a single standard. It depends on the encoding, which is the specific rulebook a computer uses to translate binary bytes into readable text, for example, Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1. That means the 128–255 table varies by system and language. For modern applications, prefer Unicode/UTF-8, which is a universal character encoding standard capable of representing every language on earth.
How to use the ASCII table
- Convert characters to codes in scripts and automation.
- Interpret bytes in logs and legacy protocols.
- Validate input by ASCII ranges.
Quick FAQ
Is ASCII the same as Unicode?
No. ASCII covers only 128 symbols. Unicode is much larger and includes most writing systems.
Why do some characters not show?
Codes 0–31 are control characters, meaning non-printable operational commands like line feed or tab, rather than visible symbols.
Conclusion
ASCII is still useful for understanding legacy systems and simple protocols. For modern applications, pair it with Unicode/UTF-8 knowledge.