Alphanumeric characters

The pocket calculators of the HP-41 series from Hewlett-Packard were the first to offer an alphanumeric display in 1979, thus heralding the replacement of the seven-segment displays with mostly red LEDs that had been common up to that time .

The term alphanumeric character includes (at least) the letters of a given alphabet , for example English , as well as the ten digits from 0 to 9. In a broader sense, certain special characters (e.g. punctuation marks : period, comma ...; Letters with diacritics , brackets, etc. are included in the alphanumeric characters. The term is mainly used in telecommunications and computer technology.

The adjective alphanumeric is often used with reference to a code or character set , or to describe the properties and possibilities of an input or output device . It is used, for example, to fill in fields in forms . Which exact characters are allowed or supported alphanumeric characters and which are not can be defined differently depending on the location. For example, some systems allow uppercase and lowercase letters, others only uppercase letters, some for example allow German umlauts and the ß, others not.

To store alphanumeric data are often strings ( strings ) are used.

Examples

Aircraft license plates are internationally alphanumeric, while vehicle license plates vary from country to country, but are mostly alphanumeric or numeric.