Any Base Converter

A Numeral system is used to represent numbers using a pre-defined list of symbols. The simplest numeral system is Binary which comprises of only two such symbols: 0 and 1. These two numbers can be used to represent numbers of any size. For example, decimal numbers can be represented as follows in Binary:-

Decimal	Binary
0	0
1	1
2	10
3	11
4	100

The next well known numeral system after Binary is Octal which comprises of 8 symbols from 0 to 7. After that comes the number system - Base 10, which we humans use in our daily lives. It has symbols from 0 to 9. Number systems after Base-10 utilize alphabets for the symbols because there are only 10 digits. Base 16, for example uses the character A to represent the decimal number 11, B to represent 12, F to represent 15, etc.

Computers use different numeral bases. A digital computer only deals with 0s and 1s, so binary (base 2) is used at the simplest level. Computers group binary digits together and there Hexadecimal (base 16) is used. When systems such as the PDP-8, ICL 1900 and IBM mainframes were employed, Octal numbers (base 8) became widely used. Three binary digits are grouped together to create an Octal number. Us humans, on the other hand, prefer decimal number system for our day to day operations. Similarly, there are usages for various other number bases.

Base Conversion Example

The value of the mathematical constant pi (π) is 3.14159 in Decimal. The same value is 3.243f3e0370cdc8754f37 in Hexadecimal.