Encodning

Encodning is not widely recognized as a distinct technical term in English. In most contexts the intended word is encoding, the process of converting information from one format to another for storage, processing, or transmission. When encodning appears, it is usually a misspelling or transliteration artifact rather than a separate concept.

Overview

Encoding serves two broad purposes: ensuring data can be represented consistently across systems, and enabling data to be transmitted or stored efficiently without loss. It is distinct from encryption, which hides content, and from compression, which reduces size. Proper encoding supports interoperability and data integrity across software, networks, and storage media.

Character encoding

A central area of encoding is character encoding, which maps characters to bytes. Common examples include ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16. The Unicode standard coordinates code points for characters across many languages, while practical implementations must handle issues such as multi-byte sequences, endianness, and potential byte order marks. Mismatches between encodings can lead to garbled text or data loss.

Other data encoding schemes

Beyond character encoding, data encoding includes methods for representing binary data as printable characters or safe transit across channels. Base64 encodes binary data for inclusion in text-based formats; URL encoding (percent-encoding) makes data safe for transmission in URLs; hexadecimal encoding is another representation commonly used in debugging and low-level communications.

Decoding and interoperability

Decoding is the inverse process of encoding. Problems arise when the encoding used to decode does not match the original encoding, leading to corrupted or unreadable data. Robust systems often specify supported encodings, include metadata, and use checksums or other error-detection methods to ensure integrity.

See also

Encoding; Unicode; ASCII; UTF-8; Base64.