Which encoding scheme utilizes numeric values to represent characters?

The encoding scheme that utilizes numeric values to represent characters is ASCII. ASCII, which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, maps each character to a specific numeric value in the range of 0 to 127. For example, the character 'A' is represented by the number 65, 'B' by 66, and so forth. This simple yet effective system allows computers to represent text in a format that can be easily stored and processed.

While Unicode and UTF-8 also represent characters using numeric values, they encompass a far broader spectrum of characters from multiple languages and symbol sets. Unicode includes many different encoding forms, one of which is UTF-8, which also relies on a more complex system to accommodate a wider variety of characters.

The hexadecimal system is a number representation format and does not directly relate to character encoding in the same way that ASCII does, even though hexadecimal numbering can be used to represent ASCII characters in a different form. Therefore, ASCII stands out specifically for its direct mapping from characters to numeric values within a limited range.