ASCII Converter

Every character on a keyboard maps to a specific number under the hood — ASCII is that mapping, and this shows exactly which number (and hex code) each character in your text corresponds to.

Inputs

Result

72 101 108 108 111

Hex 48 65 6c 6c 6f

How the ascii converter works

Each character in the input text is converted to its ASCII decimal code using the character's standard code-point value.

The same codes are also shown in hexadecimal, since hex is the more common format for referencing character codes in programming contexts.

Worked example: the text 'Hi!'

  1. 'H' = 72, 'i' = 105, '!' = 33.
  2. Decimal codes: 72 105 33.
  3. Hex codes: 48 69 21.

Common mistakes to avoid

Assuming uppercase and lowercase letters share the same code

'A' (65) and 'a' (97) are 32 apart in ASCII — a very common bug source in text-processing code that doesn't account for the case difference explicitly.

Expecting this to handle characters beyond standard ASCII correctly

Standard ASCII only covers 128 code points (0-127), the basic English alphabet, digits and punctuation — extended characters, emoji, and non-Latin scripts use Unicode code points that don't map onto the same 128-value ASCII table.

Frequently asked questions

Why is there exactly a difference of 32 between uppercase and lowercase letters?

It's a deliberate design choice in the original ASCII standard — this fixed 32 gap means switching case can be done with a single bit flip in binary, which was a meaningful efficiency consideration in early computing.

What character does code 32 represent?

The space character — one of several 'control' or whitespace codes that sit just before the printable character range (33 onward) begins.

How is ASCII related to Unicode?

Unicode was designed to be backward-compatible with ASCII — the first 128 Unicode code points are identical to standard ASCII, meaning any plain ASCII text is automatically valid, correctly-interpreted Unicode text as well.

Why do programmers often reference ASCII codes in hex rather than decimal?

Hex aligns more naturally with byte boundaries in memory (2 hex digits = 1 byte exactly), which is why source code, debuggers and documentation frequently show character codes in hex rather than decimal.

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