Human-readable medium and data

In computing, human-readable data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than as binary data. In most contexts, the alternative to a human-readable representation is a machine-readable format or medium of data primarily designed for reading by electronic, mechanical or optical devices, or computers. For example, Universal Product Code (UPC) barcodes are very difficult to read for humans, but very effective and reliable with the proper equipment, whereas the strings of numerals 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 bytes of storage and increases efficiency of access (input and output) by eliminating format parsing or conversion.

With the advent of standardized, highly structured markup languages, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), the decreasing costs of data storage, and faster and cheaper data communication networks, compromises between human-readability and machine-readability are now

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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 systems, English words are easier for humans to read, remember, and type in.

See also

• Self-documenting code: source code that is both machine-readable and human-readable
• Human-readable code
• Machine-Readable Documents
• Machine-readable data
• Data (computing)
• Data conversion
• Hellschreiber
• Human–computer interaction
• Human factors
• Plain text
• quoted-printable