Decode binary code to text, ASCII, hexadecimal, decimal and octal — with live decode, step-by-step breakdown, and an interactive character table.
| Bit 7 | Bit 6 | Bit 5 | Bit 4 | Bit 3 | Bit 2 | Bit 1 | Bit 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Dec | Hex | Bin | Char |
|---|
Binary is a base-2 number system using only 0 and 1. Every character, number or instruction stored in a computer is ultimately represented as a sequence of bits. One byte (8 bits) can represent 256 different values (0–255).
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) maps 128 characters (0–127) to binary codes. It covers the English alphabet, digits 0–9, punctuation, and 33 non-printable control characters including newline, tab, and null.
Binary input is split into groups (typically 8 bits = 1 byte). Each group is converted from base-2 to a decimal number using positional notation (e.g. 01001000 = 64+8 = 72), then mapped to its ASCII character using String.fromCharCode().
Extended ASCII uses values 128–255 for additional characters (accented letters, box-drawing, etc.). Modern text uses Unicode (UTF-8), which is backwards-compatible with ASCII for the first 128 code points, making binary→ASCII conversion universally applicable.