AI engineering glossary · Computing foundations
What is character encoding?
Character encoding (also called Text encoding): A rule that maps characters to numbers and then to bytes so that text can be stored and transmitted. Reading a file with the wrong encoding produces garbled text.
Character encoding: an example
Opening a Hindi text file saved in UTF-8 with the wrong encoding shows nonsense characters instead of Devanagari letters.
Related terms
More Computing foundations terms
Where you learn it
Character encoding is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.