What is a text file?
The text file is a computer file that stores the written document as a series of alphanumeric characters, usually without visual formatting of information. Content can be a personal note or list, magazine or newspaper article, book or any other text that can be precisely portrayed in the form of writing. Text files are similar to text processing files in that the content of both is primarily textual; It differs in that text files usually do not record information, such as the style and size of the characters, paging or other details that would specify the appearance of the finished document. Some computer operating systems create a basic resolution between a text file to be translated directly into a person's text, and a binary file that is interpreted directly by a computer.
In most schemes used for text encoding, a numeric value is assigned, with a text that is then written as a string of binary numbers. One family of coding schemes, called a standard standard code forInformation Interchange (ASCII) has become a widely used standard at the beginning of computer history, despite its poor support for languages other than English. The ISO 8859 codes family provided much better Latin alphabet -based languages and similar alphabets, but could not coded characters from East Asian languages such as the Japanese, led to the proliferation of incompatible standards.
Recently UNICODE® consortium develops a coding system called Unicode® , which aims to assign a unique number to each character used in each language on Earth. This allows you to use one code for each language and allows you to discover texts from multiple languages in one file. The first part of Unicode is based on ISO 8859, which is based on ASCII. UNICODE® can be used in English -speaking countries as a text coded with older schemes can show minor inconsistencies,When it moves from the system to the system.
The benefits of text files include small size and versatility. Kilobytes or megabytes smaller than the same data stored in other formats, can be quickly and massively replaced by e -mail or disc. Most can be opened on computers with different operating systems using very basic software. The primary disadvantage is the lack of formatting. The text file may be a bad option for representing a document that contains images or relying on design elements for communicating its meaning - a file containing table data, mathematical formulas or specific poetry.
Text files are generally designed to read and edit humans, but not all of them contain content that is primarily for human consumption. Most programming code is stored in a text file before assembly - ie converted to a macbinary file readable Hine. Files may also contain machine -readable text marks that provide Form informationAnthill except for a simple text. For example, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file can be opened as a simple text file in a text editor or displayed as a formatted web page after interpreting the web browser. Similar schemes include a latex used to distribute scientific papers and expandable marking language (XML) used for data structure.