When do the "Ho, ho, ho" and the ghosts and ghouls come into this?
One hexadecimal number represents four binary digits. But sometimes a number that represents three binary digits is used. This is called base 8, or octal numbers. Octal is sometimes abbreviated oct.
| Oct | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bin | 000 | 001 | 010 | 011 | 100 | 101 | 110 | 111 |
The symbols 8 and 9 aren't used in the base 8 system. Instead, we skip to oct 10 after oct 7. Now this may seem a little confusing, but oct 10 is actually equal to dec 8, and oct 11 represents the decimal value 9.
Using the above chart, the number oct 31 can be converted to bin 011001, and then converted to decimal:
Or you can convert octal straight to decimal:
He he?
Ho ho.