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Glite Dictionary
ASCII text file

ASCII text file

3.5
A file that has only plain letters, numbers, and symbols with no special formatting
  • noun
  • /ˈæskiˌaɪ ˈtɛkst faɪl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : archivo de texto ASCII
  • You can share code snippets easily in an ASCII text file because it contains no special formatting.

Examples

  • For maximum portability, it's best to store your notes in an ASCII text file.

  • It's a plain ASCII text file.

    The Martian (2015)

  • ALDC compresses Unicode versions of ASCII text files some 40% worse than the original ASCII, but cLDC is able to remove this penalty completely.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Originally, identicality of three even-ordered predecessors was used as the condition, but English ASCII text files, with words such as "inimitable," then invoked preprocessor operation, so it was extended to five to reduce occurrences of this condition.

    Academic text (1998)

  • This document is saved as an ASCII text file to ensure compatibility with all text editors.

Synonyms

computer file
vsASCII text file
13 2.2

A collection of information saved on a computer under a name

contains only plain ASCII characters not arbitrary data or binary
text file
vsASCII text file
  • Specialized
4 2.7

A computer file that has only plain text

restricts characters to ASCII and rejects other encodings
txt
vsASCII text file
  • Specialized
3 4.6

A simple computer file that only contains plain text and no formatting

is limited to ASCII characters only excluding other encodings

Surface Forms

ASCII text file singular
ASCII text files plural

Morphology

ASCII + text + file

The meaning is directly compositional: 'ASCII' specifies the character encoding and modifies 'text file' (a file containing text), so the phrase denotes a text file encoded in ASCII. This is a literal, technical compound rather than an idiom, so a learner who knows the constituents can infer the meaning.

Etymology

ASCII text file comes from early computers that could only read simple letters, numbers and basic symbols. The word ASCII named a system for those simple characters, so a text file called ASCII has only 'plain' characters with 'no special formatting', which is why it opens on many different computers.