Binaarseteks

Binaarseteks is a term used in information technology to describe the process of converting textual data into binary sequences. The word combines Estonian roots for binary and text and appears in some Estonian-language educational contexts to discuss how written language is represented inside digital systems.

In practice, binaarseteks relies on mapping each character to a numeric code, such as ASCII or a Unicode code point, and then converting that number to binary. Fixed-width encodings use a constant number of bits per character (for example, 7 or 8 bits for ASCII, or 8, 16, or more bits for Unicode encodings). Variable-length encodings, such as UTF-8, represent different characters with different numbers of bits.

An example in 8-bit ASCII: the character A is encoded as 01000001, and a space is 00100000. The sequence for a short string like "AB" would be 01000001 01000010. When multi-byte encodings are used, the order of bytes (big-endian vs little-endian) can affect the binary representation on some systems.

Variants of binaarseteks emphasize different goals, such as teaching the basics of encoding, enabling compact storage, or ensuring reliable transmission. It is commonly applied in data storage, network communications, and software education to illustrate how text becomes a series of bits that computers can process.

See also: ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8, binary encoding, endianness.