CPEN 211 Lecture 2: The octal and hexadecimal system
Document Summary
You also have two other systems, that can be used. The need for such systems arises because the binary takes up a lot of digits when we are trying to show large numbers through it. The octal system uses the base of 8, and it allows only 8 ciphers, from 0 to 7. It allows numbers from 0 to 9, and after that it uses the alphabets so a = 10, b = 11, c is 12, d is 13, e is 14 and f is 15 and g is 16. Now these allow you to convert from binary numbers to the respective numbers very quickly because they have bases that are powers of 2, that is 4 and 8. So, if you have to convert lets say 11011010 in the octal system, you will start with. 010, which represents 1*0 + 2*1 + 4*0 = 2.
