binary question

[spyder003]

well i'm extremely bored here at work so i decided to learn the alphabet in binary. i already knew the number system so... simple enough. i see that the alphabet is just 65-90. how do you distinguish the alphabet from the numbers 65-90? for example, say i wanted to write a message to a friend in binary. how would they determine letters from 65-90? or do you just have to look at the context?

if i didn't make this clear enough, please let me know... thx

[bonzai]

Not really sure what you know. But if what you are saying is that 65 to 90 represent the alphabet, then that makes sense because there are 26 letters in the alphabet. So just go play around with it.

[HAL9000]

Or use this.

[spyder003]

lol no i want to do things the hard way, and i want to know if there is any definition between letters and the numbers 65-90.

edit: maybe this will better explain myself...

say i write this: 01000001. how would a person know if this is supposed to mean 65 or A?

[reboot]

11000001 versus 01000001.
The first bit is the "key", telling you if it's an A or 65.

[hobey19]

well, than how do you know that 11000001 is A not -63, because, if i am not mistaken, then when you have 1 as the high order bit, it denotes a negative number, depending on what type of logic the computer is using (ie two's complement).

craig

[edfair]

Because the numbers are one character 0-9 ,32 to 41.
Every possible value from 0 to 255 has a corresponding character in the ASCII character code, even though many of them are not displayable.
It may be easier on you to group the bits into 32 character blocks (5 bits) and control codes (2 bits). And the choices with the control codes would be control(no bits) numeric, UC alpha, and LC alpha.

[bailey]

letters ar in aschii code which is changed to hex, then the hex is changed to binary,
to keep it stright

[spyder003]

i must be missing something here, or it doesn't work as i thought...

Originally posted by reboot 11000001 versus 01000001. The first bit is the "key", telling you if it's an A or 65.

wouldn't 11000001 just be 193 and 01000001 could still be 65 or A?

Originally posted by hobey19 well, than how do you know that 11000001 is A not -63, because, if i am not mistaken, then when you have 1 as the high order bit, it denotes a negative number, depending on what type of logic the computer is using (ie two's complement).

high order bit?

Originally posted by edfair Because the numbers are one character 0-9 ,32 to 41. Every possible value from 0 to 255 has a corresponding character in the ASCII character code, even though many of them are not displayable. It may be easier on you to group the bits into 32 character blocks (5 bits) and control codes (2 bits). And the choices with the control codes would be control(no bits) numeric, UC alpha, and LC alpha.

?!

[reboot]

You're talking about an 8 bit byte, so no, 11000001 is NOT 193. To get 193, you need 2 bytes, or (for argument's sake) a 16 bit byte. The first byte contains the control codes, for negative, positive, whatever, and the second byte contains the actual code for whatever alphanumeric character you want.
The larger the whole number (in decimal, base 10) the more bytes you need to represent it.

[edfair]

I led you astray. ASCII 7 level + parity. 2 channel control set + 5 channel data set. 128 characters.
EBCDIC is 8 and can do 256. Extended binary coded decimal interchange code. Splits in half to do hexadecimal notation. In hex goes from 00h to FFh. If I recall A=41h, which relates to character #65. Has been a long time. a=61h maybe.