ASCII 93 — ]

The right square bracket closes array index expressions, regular expression character classes, and JSON arrays. Proper matching of opening and closing brackets is essential for syntactically valid code in every programming language that uses them. In Markdown, ']' closes the display text portion of a link before the URL in parentheses. In INI configuration files, square brackets enclose section header names. The right bracket pairs with the left bracket to form one of the three primary delimiter pairs in programming, alongside parentheses and curly braces.

Punctuation marks serve as the structural scaffolding of written language, delineating sentences, clauses, and phrases while conveying emphasis and grouping. In programming, these same characters gain powerful additional roles as operators, statement terminators, delimiters, and syntactic markers that compilers and interpreters rely upon. This dual significance in both natural language and code syntax means punctuation characters carry outsized functional importance relative to their small count in the ASCII character set.

In the ASCII encoding table, Right Square Bracket is assigned code point 93 in decimal (0x5D hexadecimal, 135 octal, 01011101 binary). The 7-bit ASCII standard, first published in 1963 by the American Standards Association, defines exactly 128 characters that remain the foundation of text encoding systems worldwide. UTF-8, the dominant encoding on the modern web, is fully backward compatible with ASCII — every ASCII character is encoded as the identical single byte in UTF-8, guaranteeing that Right Square Bracket works reliably across all operating systems, programming languages, and internet protocols.