D1 DATA REPRESENTATION

Related material, particularly about numbers and their representation, can be found in Section D2 Numeric data representation.

The essence of any computer is its ability to store and manipulate data. The data is stored electronically and this section looks at the principles used to interpret the stored data as understandable information.

Within the computer all information is represented as some combinations of physical properties. What these properties mean depends on how we interpret them. Indeed a particular set of these properties could represent a number, a letter, a word, an instruction or a variety of other things. What a particular set of properties is taken to mean depends on the context it is in when interpreted ...

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