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Octal to Text Converter

Paste octal byte values such as 110 145 154 154 157 or \110\145\154 and read the text.

Processed locally in your browser

Options
Groups of up to 3 digits (0-7), with spaces, commas or backslashes.0 chars · 0 lines
The result will appear here.

What is Octal to Text Converter?

Octal escape sequences such as \101 appear in C string literals, shell printf, older man pages and some log formats. Each group of up to three digits (0–7) is one byte, so 110 145 154 154 157 spells "Hello".

The converter splits your input on spaces, commas or backslashes, or cuts a continuous digit string into groups of three. It rejects the digits 8 and 9, values above 377 (255 decimal) and impossible lengths with a message naming the problem, then decodes the bytes as UTF-8 so multi-byte sequences such as 303 251 give "é".

How does it work?

  1. Paste your octal codes; spaces, commas, new lines and backslashes are all fine.
  2. Keep UTF-8, or use ISO-8859-1 if the codes come from a single-byte Latin-1 source.
  3. Read the decoded text, or press Swap to convert text to octal again.

Common use cases

  • Decoding \NNN sequences in an old config file or a C source string.
  • Reading output from tools that print octal, such as od -b or tar listings.
  • Solving puzzles or exercises that encode text in base 8.
  • Checking the octal permission-style values you wrote by hand for a text message.

Examples

Try this input in the tool above:

Input
110 145 154 154 157 054 040 303 251 041
Output
Hello, é!

Privacy

Octal to Text Converter runs entirely in your browser. The text or files you provide are processed on your device and are not uploaded, logged or stored on our servers.

Limitations

Groups are read as bytes. A value above 377 is an error rather than a Unicode code point; Unicode code points in octal are not supported.

Frequently asked questions

Why is 8 or 9 rejected?

Octal has only digits 0–7. A stray 8 or 9 usually means the number is decimal or the digits were mistyped.

Can I paste one long string like 110145154154157?

Yes, if its length is a multiple of three: it is cut into 110 145 154 154 157. Mixed groups need separators.

Does it accept the leading zero, as in 0110?

Groups longer than three digits are rejected when separated. Drop the extra leading zero or remove separators so the string can be cut in threes.

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