ASCII-American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASCII
is a character encoding standard for electronic communication.
ASCII codes represent text in computers,
telecommunications equipment, and other devices.

Including descriptions of the first 32 characters. ASCII was originally designed for use with teletypes, and so the descriptions are somewhat obscure and their use is frequently not as intended.

An encoding standard limited to 128 characters, focused on the needs of certain European languages, creating 1960s.

Unicode:

A universal encoding standard for characters encompassing many languages.

1991:

Unicode has Over 7000 characters.

Today:

Over 137000 characters.

Java actually uses Unicode, which includes ASCII and other characters from languages around the world.

ASCII Table

Decimal ValueCharacter
0NUL (Null)
1SOH (Start of Heading)
2STX (Start of Text)
3ETX (End of Text)
4EOT (End of Transmission)
5ENQ (Enquiry)
6ACK (Acknowledge)
7BEL (Bell)
8BS (Backspace)
9TAB (Horizontal Tab)
10LF (NL Line Feed, New Line)
11VT (Vertical Tab)
12FF (NP Form Feed, New Page)
13CR (Carriage Return)
14SO (Shift Out)
15SI (Shift In)
16DLE (Data Link Escape)
17DC1 (Device Control 1)
18DC2 (Device Control 2)
19DC3 (Device Control 3)
20DC4 (Device Control 4)
21NAK (Negative Acknowledge)
22SYN (Synchronous Idle)
23ETB (End of Trans. Block)
24CAN (Cancel)
25EM (End of Medium)
26SUB (Substitute)
27ESC (Escape)
28FS (File Separator)
29GS (Group Separator)
30RS (Record Separator)
31US (Unit Separator)
32SPACE
33!
34
35#
36$
37%
38&
39
40(
41)
42*
43+
44,
45
46.
47/
480
491
502
513
524
535
546
557
568
579
58:
59;
60<
61=
62>
63?
64@
65A
66B
67C
68D
69E
70F
71G
72H
73I
74J
75K
76L
77M
78N
79O
80P
81Q
82R
83S
84T
85U
86V
87W
88X
89Y
90Z
91[
92\
93]
94^
95_
96`
97a
98b
99c
100d
101e
102f
103g
104h
105i
106j
107k
108l
109m
110n
111o
112p
113q
114r
115s
116t
117u
118v
119w
120x
121y
122z
123{
124|
125}
126~
127DEL
ASCII Tables