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A human-readable medium or human-readable format is any encoding of
data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...
or
information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...
that can be naturally
read Read Read may refer to: * Reading, human cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning * Read (automobile), an American car manufactured from 1913 to 1915 * Read (biology), an inferred sequence of base pairs o ...
by
human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
s. In computing, ''human-readable'' data is often encoded as
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
or
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...
text, rather than as binary data. In most contexts, the alternative to a human-readable representation is a '' machine-readable'' format or
medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...
of data primarily designed for reading by electronic, mechanical or optical devices, or computers. For example,
Universal Product Code The Universal Product Code (UPC or UPC code) is a barcode#Symbologies, barcode symbology that is widely used worldwide for tracking trade items in stores. UPC (technically refers to UPC-A) consists of 12 digits that are uniquely assigned to each ...
(UPC)
barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or on ...
s are very difficult to read for humans, but very effective and reliable with the proper equipment, whereas the strings of
numerals A numeral is a figure, symbol, or group of figures or symbols denoting a number. It may refer to: * Numeral system used in mathematics * Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English) * Numerical d ...
that commonly accompany the label are the human-readable form of the barcode information. Since any type of data encoding can be parsed by a suitably programmed computer, the decision to use binary encoding rather than text encoding is usually made to conserve storage space. Encoding data in a binary format typically requires fewer
byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
s of storage and increases efficiency of access (input and output) by eliminating format
parsing Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...
or conversion. With the advent of standardized, highly structured
markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the documen ...
s, such as
Extensible Markup Language Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readabl ...
(XML), the decreasing costs of data storage, and faster and cheaper data communication networks, compromises between human-readability and machine-readability are now more common-place than they were in the past. This has led to humane markup languages and modern
configuration file In computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are files used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system se ...
formats that are far easier for humans to read. In addition, these structured representations can be compressed very effectively for transmission or storage. Human readable protocols greatly reduce the cost of debugging. Various organizations have standardized the definition of human-readable and machine-readable data and how they are applied in their respective fields of application, e.g., the
Universal Postal Union The Universal Postal Union (UPU, french: link=no, Union postale universelle), established by the Treaty of Bern of 1874, is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations, in addition to t ...
. Often the term ''human-readable'' is also used to describe shorter names or strings, that are easier to comprehend or to remember than long, complex syntax notations, such as some
Uniform Resource Locator A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
strings. Occasionally "human-readable" is used to describe ways of encoding an arbitrary integer into a long series of English words. Compared to decimal or other compact
binary-to-text encoding A binary-to-text encoding is encoding of data in plain text. More precisely, it is an encoding of binary data in a sequence of printable characters. These encodings are necessary for transmission of data when the channel does not allow binary dat ...
systems, English words are easier for humans to read, remember, and type in. RFC 1751 "A Convention for Human-Readable 128-bit Keys"


See also

*
Self-documenting code In computer programming, self-documenting (or self-describing) source code and user interfaces follow naming conventions and structured programming conventions that enable use of the system without prior specific knowledge. In web development, s ...
– source code that is both machine-readable and human-readable *
Human-readable code Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as an ...
*
Machine-Readable Documents A machine-readable document is a document whose content can be readily processed by computers. Such documents are distinguished from machine-readable data by virtue of having sufficient structure to provide the necessary context to support the busi ...
*
Machine-readable data Machine-readable data, or computer-readable data, is data in a format that can be processed by a computer. Machine-readable data must be structured data. Attempts to create machine-readable data occurred as early as the 1960s. At the same time th ...
*
Data (computing) In computer science, data (treated as singular, plural, or as a mass noun) is any sequence of one or more symbols; datum is a single symbol of data. Data requires interpretation to become information. Digital data is data that is represented u ...
*
Data conversion Data conversion is the conversion of computer data from one format to another. Throughout a computer environment, data is encoded in a variety of ways. For example, computer hardware is built on the basis of certain standards, which requires th ...
*
Hellschreiber The Hellschreiber, Feldhellschreiber or Typenbildfeldfernschreiber (also Hell-Schreiber named after its inventor Rudolf Hell) is a facsimile-based teleprinter invented by Rudolf Hell. Compared to contemporary teleprinters that were based on ty ...
*
Human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design t ...
*
Human factors Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...
*
Plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...
*
Quoted printable Quoted-Printable, or QP encoding, is a binary-to-text encoding system using printable ASCII characters (alphanumeric and the equals sign =) to transmit 8-bit data over a 7-bit data path or, generally, over a medium which is not 8-bit clean. Hist ...


References

Optical character recognition {{Comp-sci-stub