  In recent years codes that are not Uniquely Decipherable (UD) are been
studied partitioning them in classes that localize the ambiguities of the code.
A natural question is how we can extend the notion of maximality to codes that
are not UD. In this paper we give an answer to this question. To do this we
introduce a partial order in the set of submonoids of a monoid showing the
existence, in this poset, of maximal elements that we call full monoids. Then a
set of generators of a full monoid is, by definition, a maximal code. We show
how this definition extends, in a natural way, the existing definition
concerning UD codes and we find a characteristic property of a monoid generated
by a maximal UD code.
