Difference Between ASCII and EBCDIC

 

Difference Between ASCII and EBCDIC

Definition

ASCII is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. EBCDIC is an eight-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems.

Stands for

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. EBCDIC stands for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code.

Number of bits Represent a Character

Further, ASCII uses 7 bits to represent a character. EBCDIC uses 8 bits to represent a character.

Number of Characters

Also, ASCII represents 128 (2⁷) characters while EBCDIC represents 256 (2⁸) characters.

Efficiency

Moreover, the same character in ASCII requires 7 bits, but EBCDIC required 8 bits. Therefore, ASCII is more efficient than EBCDIC.

Character Order

Besides, ASCII arranges the characters in consecutive order. EBCDIC groups 9 characters at a time.

Compatibility

Additionally, ASCII is compatible with modern encodings such as Unicode. It is possible to open ASCII files with Unicode. On the other hand, EBCDIC is not compatible with modern encodings such as Unicode.

Conclusion

ASCII and EBCDIC are two character encoding standards. The main difference between ASCII and EBCDIC is that the ASCII uses seven bits to represent a character while the EBCDIC uses eight bits to represent a character.