How does a character is printed from binary?

Question

I know an ASCII character takes 8 bits but how do you print a character on screen with those bits?

Answer 1

The byte is used as a lookup in a font table, and the appropriate pixels are lit for that character at the appropriate position.

Answer 2

You mean rather than doing

echo a

You want to type

echo 00111101

or something?

I think you'd have to convert it from binary to octal first. Then you can do:

echo -e "\0141"

Answer 3

$ printbin () { printf "\\$((2#$1/64*100+2#$1%64*10+2#$1%8))\n"; }
$ printbin 1000001
A
$ printbin 1100001
a

Answer 4

In Windows, you can use a character's Alt character code to print it by pressing Alt + [code] on the Numpad. In some cases, the Alt character code coincides with its Unicode character code.

Example: Alt + 250 = ú

You can find the whole list of Alt codes by running the Character Map applications (charmap.exe).