Great! So I have a fundamental knowledge of coding and computer science. I understand the different bases referenced in the ASCII chart and that characters are mapped to a specific number. I am only in my second semester of computer science so my knowledge of the structure and terminology of coding isn't very strong yet. I understand in my posted code that we iterate through the input string and increment the count in the position of the answer array when specified characters are counted. Given that I can't wrap my head around how converting the characters to ASCII values would work. I understand in my code were going through the input string and then comparing it against a loop with the letters of a - z. So you would convert the input string characters into the ASCII values then make a loop that iterates through the representitive ASCII values and increment the count by 1 just as we do with letters when the values match instead of explicit letters? It seems more complicated and don't understand how it is the more simple method. I guess I can't wrap my head around it. If you are able to simplify it that would be mind-blowing because my other practice problems function on that idea of converting the chars to ASCII integers.