eli5: how do computers tell the difference between letters and numbers

Question

eli5: how do computers tell the difference between letters and numbers

In: Technology

Answer 1

Inside the computers it’s all numbers essentially. All 0s and 1s, off and on. These are just arranged in a useful way and standards have been developed so that certain arrangements always mean a certain thing.

So let’s say we have 8 bits that represent characters, this gives us 256 different on and off combos and thus 256 characters to work with. If we say the first 10 are the numbers 0-9, then we can say the following 52 are all 26 uppercase and lowercase letters.

From there, we can just make it examine a particular character and determine if it falls within the first 10 combos, the next 52 combos, or any of the remaining combos, by looking at the specific 8 bits representing it.