What is Octal Number System?

The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the base-8 number system and uses the digits 0 to 7. Octal numerals can be made from binary numerals by grouping consecutive binary digits into groups of three (starting from the right). For example, the binary representation for decimal 74 is 1001010. Two zeroes can be added at the left: (00)1 001 010, corresponding the octal digits 1 1 2, yielding the octal representation 112.

Computer Number Systems Flow Chart that actually tells the different type of number systems in computer.

Some importance of octal number system

The binary number system is an alternative to the decimal (10-base) number system that we use every day. Binary numbers are important because using them instead of the decimal system simplifies the design of computers and related technologies. We know about binary number system that basically used in the computer programme. every programme is written in this format 0 or 1.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Octal Numbers’ main advantage is that it uses less digits than decimal and hexadecimal number system. So, because of it, it has less computations and less computational errors. It uses 3 bits to show any digit in binary. It is easy to convert from octal to binary. It is easy to handle input and output in the octal form.

Computer does not understand octal number system directly, so we need octal to binary converter, therefore this is the major disadvantage of octal number system.

If you want to read about octal number, you can read about this through a short-term course, or a biggest source of knowledge, through Wikipedia. It is a great source of knowledge that can provide such knowledge.

Octal number is great concept to learn if you want to start your career in the computer technology, these are (Octal Number, Binary Number, Hexadecimal etc.) some basic things that you should know before proceeding anything. If you become expert in these topics, you are no longer be a normal computer technician, but you will be an expert in computer technology, because everything starts from its basic. Right?

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