How is text stored in a computer?

Answer 1

In a computer, everything is stored in ones and zeros. A single one or zero is called a bit, and a group of 8 bits is called a byte. One byte can be represented as 8 binary numerals, like this: 10011101 Which equals the number 157. It can also be represented in hexadecimal, like this: 9D One byte can store any number between 0 and 255 (00 and FF in hex). In a computer, every text character has a specific number that represents that letter. So, when it sees a particular hex number, it translates that into the text and displays it.

This is an overly simplified description. To learn more, read up on bits, bytes, ascii codes and data storage protocols.

Answer 2

A computer encodes each letter into an ASCII equivalent. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a table that essentially says that each letter, symbol, space, tab, etc. is represented by a number between 0 and 255. A space, for example, is represented by the letter 32, while the capital A is represented by the letter 65.

Using the ASCII table, every key on a keyboard (and a bunch of special characters as well) can be stored in a single byte of information. A byte is 8 bits, and each bit is a single on/off in the computer. Therefore, each letter typed is represented by one byte.

Without getting into very technical details about how the computer physically stores that information onto a hard drive, floppy drive, CDRom, etc, suffice it to say that a simple text file is stored as a string of bytes, each byte representing a single character, and the file is then ended with an EOF (end of file) marker.

Answer 3

Text is stored just like any other data. All data is stored as bits and bytes in a file. In the case of Text there is a number (between 0 and 255) associated with each character, punctuation, spaces, symbols, etc. This number is stored as binary data (bits - either 0 or 1 - grouped in blocks of 8 bits (a word or byte). Each byte equals a text character. These are stored in a sequence that makes up the simple text file.

Various methods of storing the data have been created to make files smaller, to handle image data storage and encryption, but the process is always the same. IE., storing a sequence of numbers that represents the data. The same scheme is used whether it is stored on the disk drive or inside the RAM memory of the Computer.

Usually the file extension and the first two bytes of the file identify the files format.

Answer 4

A text entered by the user is converted into machine language. Then it is stored in the form of binary numbers as 1 and 0 or circuit ON and OFF. The memory (RAM) has various small area or compartment called the address where 1 bit is stored in each compartment.

Answer 5

It is stored as a byte in the computers memory, represented in binary.

Answer 6

As coded numbers, just like it stores anything else.