What Is Binary?
Binary is a base-2 numeral system that uses only two digits: 0 and 1. It is the fundamental language of all digital computers. Every file, image, video, and text message on your device is ultimately stored as a sequence of binary digits (bits).
Each character of text is represented by a numeric code (such as ASCII or UTF-8), which can be expressed in binary. For example, the letter A has ASCII code 65, which is 01000001 in binary.
How Text Encoding Works
- ASCII — Uses 7 bits (0–127) to represent English letters, digits, and basic symbols. The letter
A= 65,a= 97,0= 48. - UTF-8 — A variable-length encoding that is backward-compatible with ASCII. English characters use 1 byte, while characters from other languages may use 2–4 bytes.
- Binary — Each byte (8 bits) represents one ASCII character. Bytes are typically space-separated for readability:
01001000 01101001= “Hi”. - Hexadecimal — A base-16 system using digits 0–9 and letters A–F. Each hex pair represents one byte:
48 69= “Hi”. More compact than binary.
Example: The word “Hello” in binary is 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 and in hexadecimal is 48 65 6C 6C 6F.
Common Uses
- Computer science education — Understanding binary is fundamental to learning how computers store and process data.
- Debugging — Examining raw binary or hex data helps debug file formats, network protocols, and encoding issues.
- Data analysis — Hex dumps are used to inspect file headers, detect file types, and analyze binary protocols.
- Encoding verification — Compare text encoding output to verify correct UTF-8, ASCII, or other encoding implementations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between binary and hexadecimal?
Both are numeral systems for representing data. Binary (base-2) uses 0 and 1, while hexadecimal (base-16) uses 0–9 and A–F. Hex is more compact: one hex digit represents 4 binary digits. The binary 11111111 equals hex FF, which equals decimal 255.
Why are there spaces between binary groups?
Spaces separate individual bytes (8 bits) for readability. Without spaces, a long binary string like 010010000110010101101100 would be nearly impossible to read. Each 8-bit group represents one character in ASCII/UTF-8 text.