What is the term for the digital method of representing characters using combinations of zeroes and ones?

The term for representing characters using combinations of zeroes and ones is binary. In digital systems, binary is the fundamental numerical system, consisting of only two symbols: 0 and 1. This base-2 system is critical for computers and digital electronics, as all data, including characters and instructions, can be encoded into binary format. Each character, for example, can be represented by a specific binary code, allowing for efficient storage and processing.

Hexadecimal is a base-16 system that uses sixteen symbols (0-9 and A-F) and is often used to simplify binary representation for humans. Octal is a base-8 system using eight symbols (0-7), and while these numeral systems are useful in certain contexts, they do not directly represent characters in terms of zeroes and ones like binary does. Decimal is the familiar base-10 system used in everyday counting, but it is not used in digital data representation. Therefore, binary is the only correct answer for the representation of characters through zeroes and ones.