A character table is a matrix that represents a collection of characters on a collection of taxa. Each element of the matrix represents to which each element encodes one character assignment of a single taxon.

More precisely, a character dividing $n$ taxa into $S$ and $S^{\textrm{c}}$ can be encoded by an array $A$ of length $n$ for which $A[j]=1$ if the $j$th taxon belongs to $S$ and $A[j]=0$ if the $j$th taxon belongs to $S^\textrm{c}$. A character table is then formed by overlapping a collection of character arrays into a matrix.