Exended ASCII and code pages [was Re: for / while else doesn't make sense]

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Erik <python at lucidity.plus.com>:

> On 26/05/16 10:20, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>> ASCII has taken new meanings. For most coders, in relaxed style, it
>> refers to any byte-oriented character encoding scheme. In C terms,
>>
>>      ASCII == char *
>
> Is this really true? So by "taken new meanings" you are saying that it
> has actually lost all meaning.

You are exaggerating.

> The 'S' stands for "Standard". It's an encoding (each byte value refers
> to a particular character value according to that standard).
>
> To say that any array of bytes, regardless of what each byte value
> should be interpreted as, is "ASCII" makes no sense.

Read what I wrote: "character encoding scheme". Even C's "char" type
strongly suggests textual characters.

However, I must correct myself slightly: ASCII refers to any
byte-oriented character encoding scheme *largely coinciding with ASCII
proper*. But since all of them *are* derivatives of ASCII proper,
mentioning is somewhat redundant.


Marko