What is an ASCII Character?

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard that represents characters (such as letters, numbers, and symbols) as numbers between 0 and 127. ASCII codes are used to represent text in computers and other devices.

It is a 7-bit character code where each individual bit represents a unique character. So a maximum of 128 characters are represented in ASCII Standard which first 32 are control characters which were designed to control computer hardware. These are the standard characters used for most computer systems.

List of all ASCII Characters with description

ASCII CharacterNumeric CodeDescription
 0 – 31Control characters
 32Space character
!33exclamation mark
34quotation mark
#35number sign
$36dollar currency sign
%37percent sign
&38Ampersand (also used as and)
39Apostrophe (also known as single quote)
(40left parenthesis
)41right parenthesis
*42asterisk
+43plus sign
,44comma
45hyphen
.46period
/47slash
048number 0
149number 1
250number 2
351number 3
452number 4
553number 5
654number 6
755number 7
856number 8
957number 9
:58colon
;59semicolon
<60less-than
=61equals-to
>62greater-than
?63question mark
@64at sign
A65uppercase letter A
B66uppercase letter B
C67uppercase letter C
D68uppercase letter D
E69uppercase letter E
F70uppercase letter F
G71uppercase letter G
H72uppercase letter H
I73uppercase letter I
J74uppercase letter J
K75uppercase letter K
L76uppercase letter L
M77uppercase letter M
N78uppercase letter N
O79uppercase letter O
P80uppercase letter P
Q81uppercase letter Q
R82uppercase letter R
S83uppercase letter S
T84uppercase letter T
U85uppercase letter U
V86uppercase letter V
W87uppercase letter W
X88uppercase letter X
Y89uppercase letter Y
Z90uppercase letter Z
[91left square bracket
\92backslash
]93right square bracket
^94caret
_95underscore
`96grave accent
a97lowercase letter a
b98lowercase letter b
c99lowercase letter c
d100lowercase letter d
e101lowercase letter e
f102lowercase letter f
g103lowercase letter g
h104lowercase letter h
i105lowercase letter i
j106lowercase letter j
k107lowercase letter k
l108lowercase letter l
m109lowercase letter m
n110lowercase letter n
o111lowercase letter o
p112lowercase letter p
q113lowercase letter q
r114lowercase letter r
s115lowercase letter s
t116lowercase letter t
u117lowercase letter u
v118lowercase letter v
w119lowercase letter w
x120lowercase letter x
y121lowercase letter y
z122lowercase letter z
{123left curly brace
|124vertical bar (also known as pipe sign)
}125right curly brace
~126Tilde sign

C Program to print ASCII Characters

The following program prints out the numerical codes of the printable or visible ASCII characters. This C program prints ASCII values of all the alphabets and special characters. This is very handy C function for many programmers.

Output of the C Program: