1 What is it a Character Set?
Character Set - Informal definition
A character set is just a collection of symbols (letters, digits, punctuation, emojis, etc.) that a computer system knows about, together with the numbers (code points) assigned to them.
Character Set - Formal definition
A character set (more precisely, a coded character set) is a mapping between a finite set of abstract characters and a set of unique code points (integers).
It defines:
- Character repertoire = the set of characters included.
- Code space = the range of assignable numeric values.
- Mapping function = assigns each character exactly one code point.
Formally:
f : Character ↔ CodePoint ∈ CodeSpace
Where the code point is the single integer value that uniquely identifies one abstract character
