character vs identifier

character

noun
  • A person or individual, especially one who is unknown. 

  • Strength of mind; resolution; independence; individuality; moral strength. 

  • A complex number representing an element of a finite Abelian group. 

  • A being involved in the action of a story. 

  • Quality, position, rank, or capacity; quality or conduct with respect to a certain office or duty. 

  • One of the basic elements making up a text file or string: a code representing a printing character or a control character. 

  • A distinguishing feature; characteristic; trait; phene. 

  • A complex of traits marking a person, group, breed, or type. 

  • A written or printed symbol, or letter. 

  • A unique or extraordinary individual; a person characterized by peculiar or notable traits, especially charisma. 

identifier

noun
  • Someone who identifies; a person who establishes the identity of someone or something. 

  • One who identifies as a particular type or role; one who says and believes that they are a certain thing. 

  • A formal name used in source code to refer to a variable, function, procedure, package, etc. or in an operating system to refer to a process, user, group, etc. 

  • A primary key. 

  • A guidebook that helps determine the specific class of an object (such as a mushroom, herb, fish, bird, drug, or mineral), or its individual identity (such as that of a star). 

  • Something that identifies or uniquely points to something or someone else. 

  • A code that distinguishes a particular element from all other elements in a document. 

How often have the words character and identifier occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )