ASCII & Unicode Lookup

Look up ASCII and Unicode code points for any character. Convert between characters, decimal, hex, octal, and binary values.

About the ASCII & Unicode Lookup

The ASCII & Unicode Lookup tool converts characters to their numeric code points and vice versa. Enter a character to see its decimal, hexadecimal, octal, and binary values, or enter a code point number to see the corresponding character.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) defines 128 characters: control codes (0–31), printable characters (32–126), and DEL (127). It was the foundation of text encoding since 1963. Unicode extends this to over 149,000 characters across 161 scripts, covering virtually every writing system in the world.

This tool is essential for programmers working with character encoding, HTML entities, regular expressions, and internationalization. It supports the full Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP, U+0000 to U+FFFF) and shows all common numeric representations.

By calculating this metric accurately, professionals gain actionable insights that support smarter work habits, more realistic scheduling, and improved work-life balance over time. Understanding this metric in precise terms allows professionals to set achievable targets, measure progress objectively, and continuously refine their approach to time and task management.

Why Use This ASCII & Unicode Lookup?

Developers frequently need code point values for debugging encoding issues, writing escape sequences, creating HTML entities, and working with regular expressions. This tool provides instant lookup in all common formats. This quantitative approach replaces vague time estimates with concrete data, enabling professionals to plan realistic schedules and avoid the pattern of chronic overcommitment.

How to Use This Calculator

  1. Enter a single character in the character input field.
  2. Or enter a decimal code point number in the code point field.
  3. View the character alongside its decimal, hex, octal, and binary values.
  4. Use the hex value for CSS/HTML entities (&#x...;) and JavaScript (\u...).
  5. Check the Unicode block name for the character category.

Formula

Character → Code Point: codePoint = char.codePointAt(0) Code Point → Character: char = String.fromCodePoint(codePoint) Hex: codePoint.toString(16) Octal: codePoint.toString(8) Binary: codePoint.toString(2)

Example Calculation

Result: Dec: 65 / Hex: 41 / Oct: 101 / Bin: 1000001

The character "A" has ASCII/Unicode code point 65 (decimal). In hexadecimal: 0x41. In HTML: A or A. In JavaScript: "\u0041". In CSS: "\0041". All uppercase Latin letters span 65–90 (A–Z).

Tips & Best Practices

ASCII: The Foundation

ASCII was standardized in 1963 by the American Standards Association. Its 128 characters were sufficient for English text and early computing. The first 32 characters are control codes (null, bell, backspace, tab, newline, etc.), followed by printable characters starting with space (32) through tilde (126).

Unicode: Global Text

Unicode was created in 1991 to provide a unique number for every character in every writing system. It currently defines over 149,000 characters across 161 scripts. Unicode is organized into planes; the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP, U+0000–U+FFFF) contains most commonly used characters.

Encoding in Practice

UTF-8 dominates the web (used by 98%+ of websites). It's backward-compatible with ASCII and space-efficient for Latin text. UTF-16 is used internally by JavaScript and Java. UTF-32 uses fixed 4 bytes per character. Understanding these encodings is essential for internationalization.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ASCII?

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a 7-bit character encoding standard that maps 128 characters to numbers 0–127. It includes control characters (0–31), space (32), printable characters (33–126), and DEL (127). Published in 1963, it remains the foundation of modern text encoding.

What is the difference between ASCII and Unicode?

ASCII covers only 128 characters (English letters, digits, symbols). Unicode extends this to over 149,000 characters, including all world scripts, symbols, and emoji. The first 128 Unicode code points are identical to ASCII for backward compatibility.

What is a code point?

A code point is the numeric value assigned to a character in an encoding system. In ASCII, "A" is code point 65. In Unicode, the same "A" is U+0041. Code points can be expressed in decimal, hex, octal, or binary.

How do I type special characters using code points?

On Windows: hold Alt and type the decimal code on the numpad (Alt+65 = A). In HTML: use A or A. In JavaScript/JSON: use \u0041. In Python: use \u0041 or chr(65).

What is UTF-8?

UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding for Unicode. ASCII characters (0–127) use 1 byte. Characters up to U+07FF use 2 bytes. Most common characters use 1–3 bytes. Emoji and rare scripts use 4 bytes. UTF-8 is the dominant encoding on the web.

Why do I see weird characters in my text?

Garbled text (mojibake) occurs when text is decoded with the wrong encoding. Common causes: UTF-8 text read as Latin-1, or vice versa. Always ensure the encoding is consistent between writer and reader.

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