Wordnet 3.0
ADJECTIVE (1)
1.
of or pertaining to a number system having 8 as its base;
- Example: "an octal digit"
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
octal
adj 1: of or pertaining to a number system having 8 as its base;
"an octal digit"
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
octal
Number base eight. The octal number
representation uses the digits 0-7 only, with the right-most
digit counting ones, the next counting multiples of 8, then
8^2 = 64, etc. For example, octal 177 is digital 127:
digit weight value
1 8^2 = 64 1* 64 = 64
7 8^1 = 8 7* 8 = 56
7 8^0 = 1 7* 1 = 7
---
127
Octal representation used to be widespread back when many
computers used six-bit bytes, as six-bits can be
conveniently written as a two-digit octal number. Since
nowadays a byte is almost always eight bits long, the octal
system lost most of its appeal to the hexadecimal system.
Octal is still found in the C programming language and its
descendents where it is commonly to represent characters, as
in 'A' = '\101', 101 being octal for 65, the ASCII
character code for 'A'.
For a brief discussion on the word `octal' see hexadecimal.
(2017-12-18)