EBCDIC (Fully, "Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange
Code") is a
character encoding used on
IBM mainframes and
AS/400s. It is descended from
punched cards.
Outside of such IBM systems,
ASCII (and its decendants such as
Unicode) are normally used instead; EBCDIC is generalliy considered an anachronism.
There are a number of different versions of EBCDIC, customised for different countries.