the numeric representation of characters on IBM mainframe computers. (Contrast ASCII, which is used on most other computers.) The decimal and hexadecimal numbers corresponding to the most commonly used EBCDIC characters are shown in Table 6. Note that the numbering of the letters of the alphabet is discontinuous. Some EBCDIC devices support a variety of additional characters.

An advantage of EBCDIC is that digits (0, 1, etc.) can be converted into numbers (0, 1, ...) by masking off the upper four bits of their EBCDIC codes, without doing any table lookup or arithmetic. For example, the EBCDIC code for 3 is hexadecimal F3, binary 11110011, and the binary number 3 is 00000011.

computer term. The code converts a character into a binary number used by most microcomputers and information services (on-line data bases) so that different makes of microcomputers may be able to communicate with each other. ASCII is used on most microcomputers, computer terminals, and printers. ASCII codes also include control characters that information services use. Many computer books and some software programs (e.g., Borland International's Sidekick) have a table of ASCII characters. The use of ASCII also allows for data files generated by one type of program (i.e., data base management system) to be used in another type of program (i.e., spreadsheet). An example of an ASCII application follows. Data may be downloaded from an information service (e.g., Dow Jones News/Retrieval) in ASCII and then loaded into a word processing program and edited and printed out or even sent to another computer using a telecommunications program. ASCII is quite helpful in electronic mail because with MCI, for example, the accountant can upload an ASCII file as electronic mail to his clients.