ASCII Table Reference Online — Complete ASCII Chart with Decimal, Hex & Binary

What Is ASCII?

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Developed in the 1960s, ASCII defines a 7-bit character encoding standard that assigns numeric values to 128 characters: 33 non-printable control characters (codes 0–31 and 127) and 95 printable characters (codes 32–126) including letters, digits, punctuation, and symbols.

ASCII became the basis for virtually all modern character encoding systems. UTF-8, the dominant encoding on the modern web, is fully backward-compatible with ASCII: the first 128 Unicode code points match ASCII exactly, and UTF-8 encodes them using the same single-byte values.

How to Use the ASCII Table Online

1. Open the ASCII table tool at DevKits for an interactive, searchable reference.
2. Search by character — type any character to see its decimal, hex, binary, and HTML entity codes.
3. Search by code — enter a decimal or hex value to see what character it represents.
4. Browse the full table — scroll through all 128 entries organized by category.
5. Copy any value with a single click.

ASCII Table Quick Reference

Control Characters (0–31)

0  = NUL (null)          8  = BS  (backspace)
9  = HT  (tab)           10 = LF  (line feed / newline)
13 = CR  (carriage ret)  27 = ESC (escape)
32 = SP  (space)

Printable Characters (32–127)

32 = (space)   33 = !   34 = "   35 = #   36 = $
48–57 = 0–9    65–90 = A–Z    97–122 = a–z
127 = DEL

Key Features of the Online ASCII Table

• All four representations — decimal, hexadecimal, binary, and the character itself.
• HTML entities — shows the HTML escape code for each character (e.g., & for &).
• Instant search — find any character by typing its value or the character itself.
• Keyboard shortcuts — press characters on your keyboard to jump to their entry.
• Printable download — save a PDF version for offline reference.

Use Cases

Character Code Lookups in Programming

Developers frequently need to know the ASCII code for a specific character when writing low-level string manipulation code, implementing parsers, or working with character-based protocols. A searchable ASCII table provides instant answers without memorization.

Understanding String Comparison

String sorting in many languages uses ASCII/Unicode code point order. Knowing the ASCII values explains why uppercase letters sort before lowercase (A=65 comes before a=97), and why digits sort before letters (0=48 comes before A=65).

Debugging Text Encoding Issues

When your application outputs unexpected characters or garbled text, checking the ASCII codes of the output characters reveals whether the issue is a character substitution, encoding mismatch, or inadvertent control character insertion.

Designing Serial Protocols and Binary Formats

Firmware and embedded systems developers use ASCII control characters as delimiters, framing characters, and protocol markers. The ASCII table is the definitive reference for these values.

Creating Character Animations and Art

ASCII art uses printable characters to create images and animations. The ASCII table helps artists choose characters based on their visual density — characters like @ and # are "dark" while . and ' are "light".

Extended ASCII and Unicode

The original ASCII standard covers only 128 characters. "Extended ASCII" is an umbrella term for various 8-bit encodings (like ISO 8859-1 / Latin-1) that add 128 more characters in the 128–255 range for accented letters and special symbols. However, these extended sets are not standardized and vary by encoding.

For modern applications, Unicode (and its UTF-8 encoding) supersedes extended ASCII. Unicode encompasses over 140,000 characters across all human writing systems, plus emoji, mathematical symbols, and more. The DevKits ASCII table tool also links to the Unicode lookup tool for characters beyond the 128-character ASCII range.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ASCII code for Enter/Return?

The Enter key produces a carriage return (CR, ASCII 13 / 0x0D) on older Mac systems, a line feed (LF, ASCII 10 / 0x0A) on Unix/Linux, and CR+LF (0x0D 0x0A) on Windows. In most modern contexts, LF (10) is the standard newline.

What is the difference between ASCII and Unicode?

ASCII defines 128 characters (7-bit). Unicode is a superset that currently defines over 140,000 characters from all world scripts. UTF-8 is the encoding form of Unicode that is backward compatible with ASCII for the first 128 code points.

What ASCII code represents a space?

Space is ASCII code 32 (decimal), 20 (hex), 00100000 (binary). It is the lowest-numbered printable ASCII character.

How do I get the ASCII value of a character in JavaScript?

Use charCodeAt(): "A".charCodeAt(0) returns 65. To convert a code back to a character, use String.fromCharCode(65) which returns "A".

Is ASCII still relevant today?

Yes. While Unicode has replaced ASCII for character coverage, ASCII values are still used in programming, protocol design, debugging, and computer science education. UTF-8's backward compatibility with ASCII means ASCII knowledge transfers directly.