About the Decimal to ASCII Converter
Numbers such as 72 101 108 108 111 show up in exported spreadsheets, in teaching exercises about character codes, and in any program that printed a string as integers. Each number is a character code, and this page turns the list back into readable text. Numbers are separated by spaces, commas, semicolons or colons, and each input line becomes one output line so a column pasted out of a sheet keeps its shape.
The reading mode matters once values climb past 127. Unicode code points is the default: every number is one character, so 8364 gives a euro sign and 128512 gives an emoji. That mode accepts anything up to 1114111, the top of the Unicode range. UTF-8 bytes mode caps each number at 255 and assembles them into a byte array before decoding, which is the correct choice when the source program printed the encoded bytes of a string rather than its characters.
Codes below 32 have no visible shape. They are printed as dots by default so the column alignment survives, can be shown as escape sequences such as \n and \x1B, or emitted raw when you actually want the tabs and newlines back in the output. The optional character table prints every code with its U+ notation next to the character, which is useful when you are hunting a stray control code inside otherwise clean data. Feeding text in the other direction is the job of Text to Code Points, and byte level dumps belong in the Byte to ASCII Converter.
How to use
- Paste the decimal codes, keeping one record per line if the layout matters.
- Choose Unicode code points for character numbers or UTF-8 bytes for encoded byte values.
- Set the control code option to Escape when you need to identify invisible characters.
- Tick the character table to get a code, U+ notation and character row for every value.
Common questions
- What is the largest number I can enter?
- In code point mode the limit is 1114111, the highest Unicode code point. In UTF-8 byte mode the limit is 255, because a single byte cannot hold more.
- Why does 233 give different results in the two modes?
- As a code point it is an accented e on its own. As a UTF-8 byte it is an incomplete sequence, so the decoder returns a replacement character.
- Can I paste numbers separated by commas?
- Yes. Spaces, commas, semicolons and colons all work as separators, and blank lines in the input are kept as blank lines in the output.
- How do I get the newlines back?
- Set the control code option to Keep raw. Code 10 then produces a real line break instead of a dot.