What is the character representation system that uses more bits than ASCII to accommodate global character sets?

The character representation system that uses more bits than ASCII to accommodate global character sets is Unicode. Unicode is a comprehensive encoding standard designed to support the representation of text from various languages and symbols, making it possible to include characters from a vast number of scripts used worldwide.

While ASCII uses a 7-bit encoding scheme that allows for 128 unique characters, Unicode can represent over a million different characters by expanding the number of bits used. This flexibility is crucial for handling not only the characters of modern languages but also historical scripts, symbols, and emoji, making it an essential standard in today’s globalized digital environment.

In contrast, UTF-8 is actually an implementation of Unicode and encodes characters in a variable-length format using one to four bytes. ISO 8859 refers to a set of character encodings that extend ISO 646 to include additional characters but are limited compared to Unicode. Extended ASCII refers to various 8-bit character sets that are also enhancements of standard ASCII but do not encompass the wide range of global characters found in Unicode.