ASCII vs Unicode: What's the Difference?
4 min read
ASCII and Unicode are character encoding standards. ASCII came first and handles English; Unicode handles every language on Earth.
Comparison
| Feature | ASCII | Unicode |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | 128 (7-bit) | 149,000+ (21-bit) |
| Languages | English only | All languages |
| Emojis | No | Yes |
| Encoding | Single byte | UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 |
| Compatibility | Subset of Unicode | Superset of ASCII |
UTF-8
UTF-8 is the dominant Unicode encoding. It's backwards-compatible with ASCII — the first 128 characters are identical.
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