Hex to Text Conversion: ASCII Table, Hex Dumps & Programming Guide

Hex to Text Conversion: ASCII Table, Hex Dumps & Programming Guide

Hexadecimal is the lingua franca of low-level computing. Whether you are debugging network packets, reading memory dumps, inspecting file headers, or working with cryptographic hashes, the ability to convert between hex and readable text is an essential skill.

This guide covers everything you need to know about hex-to-text conversion: how ASCII and UTF-8 map characters to hex values, how to read hex dumps, and how to perform conversions in code. Try our free hex to text converter to follow along with any example below.

How Hex Represents Text

Computers store text as sequences of bytes, where each byte has a numeric value between 0 and 255. Hexadecimal (base-16) provides a compact way to express these byte values using exactly two digits per byte (00 to FF).

The mapping from bytes to characters is defined by character encodings:

• ASCII: Maps values 0-127 to English letters, digits, punctuation, and control characters
• UTF-8: Extends ASCII to cover all Unicode characters (every script, symbol, and emoji)

Example: "Hello" in Hex

Character	ASCII Decimal	Hex Value
H	72	48
e	101	65
l	108	6C
l	108	6C
o	111	6F

So "Hello" in hex is: 48 65 6C 6C 6F

Complete ASCII Hex Table

The ASCII standard defines 128 characters (0-127). Here are all 95 printable characters with their hex, decimal, and binary values:

Digits (0x30-0x39)

Char	Hex	Dec	Binary
0	30	48	00110000
1	31	49	00110001
2	32	50	00110010
3	33	51	00110011
4	34	52	00110100
5	35	53	00110101
6	36	54	00110110
7	37	55	00110111
8	38	56	00111000
9	39	57	00111001

Uppercase Letters (0x41-0x5A)

Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec
A	41	65	J	4A	74	S	53	83
B	42	66	K	4B	75	T	54	84
C	43	67	L	4C	76	U	55	85
D	44	68	M	4D	77	V	56	86
E	45	69	N	4E	78	W	57	87
F	46	70	O	4F	79	X	58	88
G	47	71	P	50	80	Y	59	89
H	48	72	Q	51	81	Z	5A	90
I	49	73	R	52	82

Tip: Uppercase letters start at 0x41 (65). Lowercase letters start at 0x61 (97). The difference is exactly 0x20 (32) -- flipping bit 5 toggles case.

Lowercase Letters (0x61-0x7A)

Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec
a	61	97	j	6A	106	s	73	115
b	62	98	k	6B	107	t	74	116
c	63	99	l	6C	108	u	75	117
d	64	100	m	6D	109	v	76	118
e	65	101	n	6E	110	w	77	119
f	66	102	o	6F	111	x	78	120
g	67	103	p	70	112	y	79	121
h	68	104	q	71	113	z	7A	122
i	69	105	r	72	114

Common Symbols (0x20-0x2F, 0x3A-0x40, 0x5B-0x60, 0x7B-0x7E)

Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec	Char	Hex	Dec
(space)	20	32	:	3A	58	[	5B	91
!	21	33	;	3B	59	\	5C	92
"	22	34	<	3C	60	]	5D	93
#	23	35	=	3D	61	^	5E	94
$	24	36	>	3E	62	_	5F	95
%	25	37	?	3F	63	`	60	96
&	26	38	@	40	64	{	7B	123
'	27	39					}	7D
(	28	40				~	7E	126
)	29	41
*	2A	42
+	2B	43
,	2C	44
-	2D	45
.	2E	46
/	2F	47

How to Read Hex Dumps

A hex dump displays file or memory contents in a standardized format with three columns:

Offset     Hex bytes                                      ASCII
00000000   48 65 6C 6C 6F 2C 20 57  6F 72 6C 64 21 0A 54 68  |Hello, World!.Th|
00000010   69 73 20 69 73 20 61 20  68 65 78 20 64 75 6D 70  |is is a hex dump|
00000020   20 65 78 61 6D 70 6C 65  2E 0A                    | example..|

Column Breakdown

1. Offset (left): Memory address or file position in hex. Each row is 16 bytes apart (0x10).
2. Hex bytes (middle): 16 bytes shown as hex pairs, often split into two groups of 8.
3. ASCII (right): Printable characters shown as-is; non-printable bytes shown as .

Common Control Characters in Hex Dumps

Hex	Name	Meaning
00	NUL	Null byte (string terminator in C)
0A	LF	Line feed (Unix newline \n)
0D	CR	Carriage return (\r)
0D 0A	CRLF	Windows newline (\r\n)
09	TAB	Horizontal tab (\t)
1B	ESC	Escape character
7F	DEL	Delete

Command-Line Hex Dump Tools

UTF-8 Multi-Byte Characters

ASCII covers only 128 characters. For international text, emoji, and symbols, UTF-8 uses 1 to 4 bytes per character:

Unicode Range	Bytes	Hex Pattern	Example
U+0000-U+007F	1 byte	0xxxxxxx	A = 41
U+0080-U+07FF	2 bytes	110xxxxx 10xxxxxx	é = C3 A9
U+0800-U+FFFF	3 bytes	1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx	中 = E4 B8 AD
U+10000-U+10FFFF	4 bytes	11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx	😀 = F0 9F 98 80

How to Identify UTF-8 in Hex

The leading byte tells you how many bytes the character uses:

• 00-7F: Single byte (ASCII)
• C0-DF: First byte of a 2-byte character
• E0-EF: First byte of a 3-byte character
• F0-F7: First byte of a 4-byte character
• 80-BF: Continuation byte (never starts a character)

Hex-to-Text Conversion in Programming

Python

JavaScript

Command Line

Common Hex Values Every Developer Should Know

Hex	Meaning	Where You'll See It
FF FE	UTF-16 LE BOM	Start of UTF-16 files
FE FF	UTF-16 BE BOM	Start of UTF-16 files
EF BB BF	UTF-8 BOM	Start of UTF-8 files (optional)
89 50 4E 47	PNG file header	.png magic bytes
FF D8 FF	JPEG file header	.jpg magic bytes
25 50 44 46	PDF file header (%PDF)	.pdf magic bytes
50 4B 03 04	ZIP file header	.zip, .docx, .jar magic bytes
7F 45 4C 46	ELF header	Linux executables
CA FE BA BE	Java class file	.class magic bytes
DE AD BE EF	Debug marker	Common debug/magic constant
00 00 00 00	Null bytes	Uninitialized memory

These "magic bytes" (file signatures) at the start of files identify the file format regardless of the file extension.

Hex to Text vs Hex to Decimal

These are different operations that are frequently confused:

Operation	Input	Output	Purpose
Hex to text	48 65 6C 6C 6F	Hello	Character encoding lookup
Hex to decimal	FF	255	Number base conversion
Hex to binary	A3	10100011	Number base conversion

Hex to text interprets each hex pair as a character encoding (ASCII/UTF-8). Hex to decimal converts a hex number to base-10. Use our hex to decimal converter for number conversions or our hex to binary converter for binary conversions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if a hex string is text or binary data?

Look at the byte values. If most bytes fall in the printable ASCII range (0x20-0x7E), it is likely text. If you see many values outside this range (especially 0x00, 0x80-0xFF), it is probably binary data. Hex dump tools show the ASCII interpretation alongside hex values to help you identify text within binary files.

Why do some hex strings start with 0x?

The 0x prefix is a programming convention (used in C, Java, Python, JavaScript) that tells the compiler/interpreter the number is hexadecimal, not decimal. It has no effect on the value: 0x41 and 41 in hex are the same number. When converting hex to text, strip any 0x prefixes before processing.

What is the difference between big-endian and little-endian hex?

Endianness affects the byte order of multi-byte values (like integers), not individual bytes. Big-endian stores the most significant byte first (0x00 0x01 = 1), while little-endian stores the least significant byte first (0x01 0x00 = 1). Text encoding (ASCII/UTF-8) is always read left-to-right, so endianness does not affect hex-to-text conversion.

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Ready to convert hex? Try our hex to text converter for instant conversion with a character breakdown table. For related conversions, check out our hex to binary converter, hex to decimal converter, and binary translator.