American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a seven bit code used to represent alphanumeric characters. In an ASCII (ass-key) file, each character is represented with a 7-bit binary number and 128 possible characters are defined. ASCII was developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

ASCII is the most common format for text files in computers and on the Internet. Windows NT-based systems use a newer code, Unicode. Conversion programs allow different operating systems to change a file from one code to another.

See also: ANSI