In computer memory, character are represented using predefined
character set. Historically 7 bit American Standard Code for
Information Interchange (ASCII) code, 8 bit American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) code and Extended Binary Coded Decimal
Interchange Code(EBCDIC) were used. These coding scheme represents
selected characters into 7 or 8 bit binary code. These character
schemes do not represent all the characters in all the languages in
uniform format. At present Unicode is used to represent characters
into the computer memory. Unicode provides universal and efficient
character presentations and hence evolved as modern character
representation scheme. Unicode scheme is maintained by a non-profit
organization called Unicode consortium. Unicode is also compatible
with other coding scheme like ASCII. Unicode use either 16 bits or
32 bits to represent a character. Unicode has capability represent
characters from all the major languages in use currently across the
world.
