Extended Binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC) is a _____ bit character encoding.

Extended Binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC) is a _____ bit character encoding.

• A. 7
• B. 16
• C. 8
• D. 4

Answer: (C)

Bit width determines how many unique symbols a character encoding can represent. EBCDIC uses 8 bits per character, giving 256 possible code points. This 8-bit design was chosen for IBM mainframes in the 1960s, allowing a broad set of characters and control codes distinct from ASCII. The other options correspond to different widths: 7-bit encodings cover about 128 symbols, 16-bit schemes (like UTF-16) cover far more and are used in modern Unicode systems, and 4-bit encoding would only cover 16 symbols. So the encoding is 8 bits per character.

Bit width determines how many unique symbols a character encoding can represent. EBCDIC uses 8 bits per character, giving 256 possible code points. This 8-bit design was chosen for IBM mainframes in the 1960s, allowing a broad set of characters and control codes distinct from ASCII. The other options correspond to different widths: 7-bit encodings cover about 128 symbols, 16-bit schemes (like UTF-16) cover far more and are used in modern Unicode systems, and 4-bit encoding would only cover 16 symbols. So the encoding is 8 bits per character.