🔟 How Text Converts to Numbers

A computer stores text as numbers underneath — and that number can be written in decimal, hex, or binary depending on which base a human reads it in.

A character is a number underneath

The character "A" is stored internally as the number 65 (its Unicode code point, which matches ASCII here). That 65 can be written as decimal, as hex (0x41), or as binary (01000001) — all three are exactly the same value.

Why each base gets used

Decimal is the most intuitive for a person, hex compresses four binary digits into one character and is common in programming for memory addresses and color codes, and binary shows exactly what the computer processes at the lowest level.

Multi-byte characters

A character like a Korean syllable, which takes multiple bytes in UTF-8, has each byte carry its own separate numeric value — so the converted result for one character shows up as several numbers, one per byte.

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