What does encodes mean?

Answer 1

It is the opposite of decode. When you encode an entity you are altering its representation. To restore the origin al representation you must decode it.

In computers, everything must be encoded in binary. This means everything must be reduced to a numeric value. The word "Answers" is not a number but it can be encoded as a number by replacing each character with its ANSI numeric code. Converting each of these values to binary we find that the word "Answers" can be encoded as the binary value: 00100001011011100111001101110111011001010111001001110011

Now that it is numeric, we can encode it further through the use of compression encryption, Gray code or any encoding we wish.

Answer 2

Depending on the context, the word can mean one of several things. In general, encoding means re-representing information in another format. For instance, the text you type on the keyboard is encoded as a set of zeros and ones according to some standard such as the ASCII, ANSI, or UNICODE. Other data types such as images, audio, and video have their different encoding methods. Therefore, you find different types of images such as GIF and JPG and different video formats such as MPG, and AVI.

Another context where encoding happens is data compression where specific patterns of data is encoded (re-represented) using smaller segments. Moreover, encoding happens when data is encrypted.

Another context is data communication where data is encoded into signals.

Bar codes are also some sort of encoding.