BARCODE FORMATS:

UPC:
Stands for Universal Product Code, which was the first system of bar code labeling to be widely adopted for product marking.

UPC-A bar codes are the most common type of UPC barcodes and have ten digits plus two overhead digits. The first character indicates the product type, the next five digits represent the manufacturer and the next five digits represent the product. The final digit is a checksum digit.
UPC-E is the second most common type of UPC barcode and is used for products where the size of the package cannot accommodate a standard UPC-A barcode format. UPC-E barcodes are encrypted versions of the UPC-A formatUPC A and E Barcodes can represent only numerical data (numbers 0 through 9) - no text characters are allowed.
EAN European Article Numbering symbols are fixed in length (either 8 (EAN-8) or 13 (EAN-13)) and can only contains the digits 0-9. In the EAN system, the first two or three digits are normally used to identify the country of the EAN International Organization issuing the number
Code 2 of 5 can represent the digits 0-9. It is a popular choice for airline tickets, photo developing envelopes and internal warehouse systems.

Code 128 system uses 4 different bar and space widths to achieve a relatively compact barcode. There is no restriction to the number of characters that can be encoded in the 128 systems, although the width of the barcode must remain within the scanning width of the actual barcode scanner.

Code 3of 9:
is an alphanumeric barcode. It is also known as the Code39. It is commonly used for various bar-coding labels, such as name badges, inventory and industrial applications. The Code 39 barcode is the easiest of the alphanumeric barcodes to use and is designed for character self-checking thus eliminating the need for check character calculations.
The symbology of the Code 39 character set consists of barcode symbols representing characters 0-9, A-Z, the space character and symbols: , . , $, /, +, %

As the scanner picks up the bars of the barcode, it then transfers the information to a computer (or register). The computer then finds the record associated with that barcode in the store inventory or POS system. The computer records may contain such information as price, number of items available etc.

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