What are the advantages and disadvantages of EBCDIC?

Answer 1

EBCDIC (Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is a character encoding system used by IBM mainframe computers. It is a binary code used to represent character data, and is an extension of the earlier ASCII code. EBCDIC is used primarily on IBM mainframe computers, and its variants are used on IBM midrange computers.

EBCDIC has a number of advantages over ASCII. First, it is a more efficient code, requiring fewer bits to represent a character. Second, it allows for more characters to be represented, including accented characters and non-Latin alphabets. Third, it has built-in error-checking features that ASCII does not have.

However, EBCDIC also has a number of disadvantages. First, it is not as widely used as ASCII, so there is less software available that can work with it. Second, it is not as easy to convert data from EBCDIC to ASCII (or vice versa) as it is with ASCII. Finally, EBCDIC is a proprietary code, developed and owned by IBM, so it cannot be used by other computer manufacturers without a license from IBM.