Karakterkészlet

Karakterkészlet, also known as character set or character encoding, refers to a standardized collection of characters that a computer system can recognize, store, and process. Each character within a set is assigned a unique numerical value, often called a code point. This mapping allows digital devices to represent text, symbols, and control characters.

Historically, various character sets have been developed to support different languages and writing systems. Early examples include ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which primarily supported English characters and basic control codes. As computing became more global, the need for broader character support led to the development of extended ASCII sets and later, more comprehensive standards like ISO 8859 and the Unicode standard.

Unicode is now the dominant character encoding standard, designed to represent virtually all characters from all writing systems used in the world, as well as symbols and emojis. It assigns a unique number, or code point, to each character. However, Unicode itself is a standard for character representation; the actual storage and transmission of these characters in computer systems are handled by character encodings, such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. These encodings specify how the numerical code points of Unicode characters are represented as sequences of bytes. The choice of character encoding is crucial for ensuring that text is displayed correctly across different systems and applications, avoiding issues like mojibake, where characters are misinterpreted.