ASCII to Hex Conversion Table: Complete

The complete ASCII to hex conversion table.

This ASCII to hex table contains all 256 ASCII characters and their hex counterparts.

So if you want to get the complete ASCII to hex conversion table, then this article is for you.

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ASCII to Octal Conversion Table: Complete (PDF File)

What Is ASCII in a Nutshell?

Have you ever stopped to wonder how your computer works?

You may know that computers use binary (combinations of the numbers zero and one) to store information, but how does that translate into the comprehensive text you read on your screen?

The answer lies with ASCII.

ASCII Explained

ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Essentially, it is the computer’s own language.

Computers have a seven-digit code to represent each letter, number, and punctuation. This code is binary, so it only uses a combination of zeros and ones.

For example, the bits (binary digits) for a capital A are 01000001, while the bits for a lowercase A are 01100001.

If you counted how many digits there are, you might be confused about why there are eight digits instead of seven.

Well, each byte in the standard ASCII starts with zero, so the following seven digits are those that differentiate the characters.

ASCII has codes for 255 characters.

Instead of remembering the byte for each letter, symbol, and number, the founders organized them numerically and assigned them a decimal value.

For example, capital A (as mentioned above) is number 65, while the lowercase A is 97.

ASCII Sections

To further organize these codes, the founders separated the characters into two sections, which later became three as people developed codes for more specialized characters.

The first ASCII section is a control group that contains unprintable characters.

There are a total of 32 characters in this subgroup, labeled from 0 to 31.

These unprintable numbers are only to control different external devices, like a keyboard or a printer.

In the next section, you’ll find the printable characters that occupy spaces 32 to 127.

Any character you see on the keyboard will be in this group, from the % symbol to the letters and numbers.

Hands typing on a white keyboard inside the office.

Even the spacebar and the delete key have their own codes (numbers 32 and 127, respectively).

The final section, ranging from character code 128 to 255, was a more recent addition.

Every code has eight bits, each starting with one (as opposed to zero as in the previous two sections).

The characters in this section vary depending on the particular operating system language you are using. Many foreign characters (like Á and Ö) fall into this category.

History of ASCII

Sixty years ago, a conversation about creating a unified coding system for all types of characters began.

The first meeting of the American Standard’s Association’s subcommittee X3.2 occurred in October 1960, and the members started with a teleprinter code from the Bell company.

From there, they published the first version in 1963, which only had numbers and capital letters. In 1967, they added the first section of control characters and lowercase letters.

Fourteen years later, they implemented the extension group. This third section includes characters from 128 to 255.

The majority of computing systems still use ASCII, but new variations are becoming popular with specific systems.

Using the ASCII

Whether you’ve realized it or not, you already use ASCII! Just using a computer system utilizes the ASCII.

Nevertheless, it’s helpful to learn and understand ASCII—even if you aren’t interested in the technical details – so you can quickly get a foreign language letter whenever you need it.

For example, with Windows, you can press the ALT key and the given code to get any particular character.

Instead of copying and pasting those accented letters or unique currency signs, you can use this quick method not to break the flow of your typing.

Variations of ASCII

Since the ASCII contains mainly American characters, several variations with non-English letters developed around the world.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the third section of the ASCII, including eight-bit codes.

The extension, called the ISO 8859, has numerous language variations.

Western European languages: Latin-1
Eastern European and non-Cyrillic central languages: Latin-2
Esperanto and southern European languages: Latin-3
Northern European languages: Originally Latin-4, now called Latin-10 or Latin-6
Turkish: Latin-5
Cyrillic: 8859-5
Arabic: 8859-6
Greek: 8859-7
Hebrew: 8859-8

The numerous names for the code for northern European languages show that the information interchange code is continually changing as people develop more efficient systems.

A fantastic example of these continual changes is the creation of Unicode.

The Universal Coded Character Set aims to provide a completely comprehensive code set for all characters.

There are currently 143,859 characters, including historical scripts and emojis.

Thanks to its goal of including thousands of characters, it has become a popular choice for computer software.

Learn every little tiny bit about ASCII in this in depth article about ASCII: What Is ASCII & What Is ASCII Used For?

What Is Hexadecimal (hex) Numeral System in a Nutshell?

The Hexadecimal Number System is one type of Number Representation technique.

With this method, the base is 16.

What this means is that there are only 16 possible digit values or symbols.

These include 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, and F.

In this, A, B, C, D, E, and F are considered single bit representations of the decimal values for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

Only four bits are needed to represent the value for any digit.

A Hexadecimal number is indicated by adding the “h” suffix or the “0x” prefix.

How Does the Hexadecimal Numeral System Work?

Hexadecimal, also called base 16 or Hex, is used to share and write numerical values.

This means that it is not any different than the more well-known numeral systems, including decimals.

However, decimal uses a base of 10 (which is ideal for individuals with 10 fingers!) and uses 10 unique digits. These are combined to represent numbers.

Hex is like decimal because it combines digits to create bigger numbers. As mentioned above, Hex uses 16 unique digits.

There are countless other numeral systems.

For example, binary, which uses a base of two, is popular for those in engineering. That is because it is the language of computers.

The base two binary system uses just two-digit values – zero and one – which represent numbers.

Like binary and decimal, Hex is one of the most used numeral systems for the programming and electronics industries.

It is essential to know how Hex works because it makes more sense to represent a number using base 16 rather than decimal or binary.

Understanding the Basics of Hex

With Hex, you will encounter both lower case, and upper-case representations of A through F.

Both work the same.

There is not much of a standard regarding upper versus lower case.

For example, A2F is the same as a2f and the same as a2F.

Subscripts Used with Hex

Hexadecimal and decimal have 10 digits that are the same.

As a result, they create many similar-looking numbers.

However, 10 in Hex is a completely different number than what it is in decimal.

The 10 in Hex is the same as 16 in decimal.

It is necessary to have a way to clearly state if a number you are talking about is a 16 or 10 base (or base 2 or base 8).

This is where base subscripts come in. For example, 16₁₀= 10₁₆.

The hexadecimal 10, which is shown by the subscript 16, is the same as decimal 16 (see the subscript 10).

However, subscripts are not the only way to clearly state a number’s base; this is just the most literal method used.

How to Count with Hex?

Counting with Hex is like counting with decimals.

The only difference is that there are six additional digits to handle.

Once a digit place exceeds “F,” the place is rolled to “0,” and increment to the digit to the left by one.

Hex Identifiers

Usually, a hexadecimal number is suffixed or prefixed with a specific identifier. The most common include:

0x: Shows up commonly in C-based and UNIX programming languages
#: Color references for image editing and HTML
% Used for URLs for expressing certain characters such as a “space.”
/x: Used for expressing character control codes
&#x: Used for XHTML, XML, and HTML for expressing Unicode characters
0h: Prefix used by programmable graphic calculators

There are several other suffixes and prefixes that are used for programming languages.

For example, with assembly languages, you may see the suffix “H” or “h” or the prefix “$.” If you do not know what programming language to use, there are plenty of examples available.

How Is the Hexadecimal Number System Used?

The Hexadecimal Number system can be used for microprocessors and computer programming.

It can also be used for describing web pages and colors.

Graphic designer working on color selection.

Each of the three main colors is represented using two hexadecimal digits for creating 255 potential values, resulting in over 16 million potential colors.

The Hexadecimal number system can also be used for describing locations in memory for each byte.

These numbers are also easier to write and read than decimal or binary numbers for computer pros.

The biggest benefit offered by Hexadecimal numbers is that it will use less memory to store more numbers.

For example, it can store 256 numbers in just two digits, but decimal numbers stores just 100 numbers in two numbers.

Complete ASCII to Hex Table

Find the complete ASCII master table in this in depth article about ASCII.

Complete ASCII to Hex Table as PDF

More ASCII Tables

If you’re looking for any other ASCII conversion table than the complete ASCII to hex table, then you’ll find it here.

All tables come as a PDF version as well: