< programming > A sequence of data values, usually bytes , which usually stand for characters (a "character string"). The mapping between values and characters is determined by the character set which is itself specified implcitly or explicitly by the environment in which the string is being interpreted.
The most common character set is ASCII but, since the late 1990s, there has been increased interest in larger character sets such as Unicode where each character is represented by more than eight bits .
Most programming languages consider strings (e.g. "124:shabooya:\n", "hello world") basically distinct from numbers which are typically stored in fixed-length binary or floating-point representation.
A bit string is a sequence of bit s.
(1999-12-21)