striking

adj 1: sensational in appearance or thrilling in effect; "a

dramatic sunset"; "a dramatic pause"; "a spectacular

display of northern lights"; "it was a spectacular

play"; "his striking good looks always created a

sensation" [syn: {dramatic}, {spectacular}]

2: having a quality that thrusts itself into attention; "an

outstanding fact of our time is that nations poisoned by

anti semitism proved less fortunate in regard to their own

freedom"; "a new theory is the most prominent feature of

the book"; "salient traits"; "a spectacular rise in

prices"; "a striking thing about Picadilly Circus is the

statue of Eros in the center"; "a striking resemblance

between parent and child" [syn: {outstanding}, {prominent},

{salient}, {spectacular}]

n 1: the physical coming together of two or more things; "contact

with the pier scraped paint from the hull" [syn: {contact},

{impinging}]

2: a act of hitting one thing with another; "repeated hitting

raised a large bruise"; "after three misses she finally

got a hit" [syn: {hit}, {hitting}]

string

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)