What are some of the differences between the Baudot digital code and ASCII?

Baudot is a legacy teleprinter code that uses only 5 data bits per character. Because 5 bits can only represent 32 unique states (2 to the 5th power), it lacks the capacity to represent the full alphabet, numbers, and punctuation all at once. To overcome this limitation, Baudot relies on two special shift characters. Sending a 'Letters' shift tells the receiving machine to interpret subsequent codes as letters, while a 'Figures' shift changes the interpretation to numbers and punctuation. ASCII modernized digital text by using 7 or 8 data bits per character. A 7-bit code provides 128 unique states, which is more than enough to include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols simultaneously, completely eliminating the need for shift codes.