1. A method of extracting, for the purpose of recognition processing, character features from a character pattern detected by an optical scanner, digitized into character digital bits and background digital bits and stored in a two-dimensional memory, said method comprising the steps of: (a) scanning said character pattern on the two-dimensional plane of said memory sequentially row by row to detect unit row pattern blocks each including a single row bit array; (b) separating from each of said unit row pattern blocks predetermined parameters including a run of a series of character digital bits and respective run length data and coordinates data for each run of each said block; (c) for each of said scanning steps, comparing the respective detected unit row pattern block with the unit row pattern block detected by the just preceding scanning such that in accordance with variations in the detected parameters in the compared unit pattern blocks, types of local features are detected in the form of a concavity opened upward, downward, left and right, and extracted and listed in correspondence with the compared unit pattern blocks; and (d) successively integrating said local features extracted by each said scanning step, coding the results obtained in the course of the step of successively integrating and the predetermined parameters including run length data and then listing feature quantities and coordinates of respective segments as global features.