We have already studied the octal number system and hexadecimal number system and worked on few solved examples to understand the representation of octal numbers and the representation of hexadecimal numbers.
Octal vs Hexadecimal Comparison
| Hexadecimal Numbers | Octal Numbers |
|---|---|
| It uses 16 different symbols or digits for representing hexadecimal numbers, [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F]. | Octal numbers use only 8 symbols or digits to represent all the octal numbers. Therefore, it can have digits from 0 to 7 only. |
| The radix or base for hexadecimal numbers is 16. | The radix or the base for octal number is 8. |
| Easier to represent and remember large numbers. | Easy to represent using octal number system but difficult to remember large numbers. |
| Example of Hexadecimal number: FF (Equivalent to Two hundred and fifty-five in decimal) | Example of Binary number: 377 (Equivalent to Two hundred and fifty-five in decimal) |
| It takes 4 bits or 4 Binary digits to represent a single Hexadecimal digit. | It takes only 3 bits or 3 Binary digits to represent an Octal digit. |
| Since the hexadecimal number system uses 16 digits, the arithmetic and logical operations could become complex. | On the other hand, the Octal number system uses a lesser number of digits (8). This makes performing arithmetic and logic operations easy compared to the hexadecimal number system. |
| Representing large decimal numbers in the hexadecimal number system is easier. | Representing large decimal numbers in octal becomes difficult and large. |