ANSI vs Unicode – Difference and Comparison

What is ANSI?

ANSI That is, the American National Standards Institute program is used to encode characters with the 8 b character set and 128 additional characters. ANSI consists of symbols, numbers, text that are used for encoding in the operating system. ANSI is considered an older version in the current operating systems.

The drawback of ANSI is, ANSI uses many code pages, depending on the language is being used and because of this action data doesn’t remain the same as data written, and this can result in data corruption. The program can crash in certain situations.

ANSI is used on operating systems like Windows 95 and windows 98 which are older versions, and uses an 8-bit character set for every code and has limitations for accommodating more features as compared to other coding standards.

ANSI has a fixed width and has additional 128 characters that are used for coding programs, which make unreadable formats into readable ones. It has over 128 languages present for the different coding processes. And are used for encoding in the operating system. ANSI is considered an older version in the current operating systems.

What is Unicode?

Unicode is an encoding standard that helps in character encoding, which is used for today’s operating systems like windows, Linux, etc. Unicode has two types of versions I.e 8-bits character encoding and 16-bits character encoding.

Unicode has a single platform, only one program for performing and coding process, and is considered faster in encoding characters as it is an updated version and has both fixed and variable width available. It has a hexadecimal point of code with over 65,000 code elements that can code all languages worldwide. Unicode extensions are used for encoding more than 1 million characters.

Unicode is designed in such a way that the program can convert non-Unicode databases to Unicode formats. There are numerous data types available in Unicode and the coding system. Unicode uses 32 bits as the maximum limit for coding I.e into characters. The latest version of Unicode has about 159 encoded character scripts, almost all of which can be converted during encoding.

Difference Between ANSI and Unicode

  1. ANSI is the American National Institute used for encoding in both older and new versions in the operating system. Whereas, Unicode is the latest version and is used for encoding. And only works on the new version of the operating system.
  2. ANSI is considered slower in encoding programs whereas Unicode is a faster and better encoding standard with new advanced features.
  3. ANSI has a fixed width for the encoding process Unicode, on the other hand, has both fixed variables used in the encoding process.
  4. ANSI uses many different programs to encode characters that can corrupt data, with Unicode boxes used to encode different languages on a single platform.
  5. ANSI uses 8-bit characters, which have around 256 characters for encoding purposes whereas Unicode uses 32bits, which have more than 1 million characters used while coding.

Comparison Between ANSI and Unicode

Parameters Of Comparison ANSIUnicode
DefinitionANSI American national standards are set up used for encoding different software. And using 8 bits, there are 128 character codes.Unicode is also a new version of and coding standard operating with 8 bits and 16 bits format.
WidthANSI has a fixed width while coding standard characters.Unicode has both Variable and fixed widths for the encoding process.
Language Used For EncodingANSI uses different languages over the operating system.Unicode uses only one program for performing encoding.
Speed Of OperationANSI has slower encoding standards.Unicode is considered faster in encoding characters.
Operating SystemANSI is considered an older version And used on operating systems like Windows 95 Windows 98. Unicode is the latest version and is used on operating systems like Linux, the latest Windows version. And cannot be used on the older version.

References

  1. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-24730-2_15
  2. https://www.journals.ala.org/lrts/article/view/5063