ASCII 126
Tilde (~)
Printable ASCII
Tilde. Home directory shortcut in Unix. Bitwise NOT in C-family languages.
Common uses & context
The character '~' — Tilde — has ASCII code 126 (0x7E), octal 0176, binary 01111110. Tilde. Home directory shortcut in Unix. Bitwise NOT in C-family languages.
Punctuation and symbol codes carry the most syntactic weight per byte in programming: a single '~' can change how a parser reads an entire expression. When '~' needs to appear as literal data rather than syntax, you often have to escape it — in string literals, in regular expressions, in URLs (where it becomes %7E), or in HTML. Knowing its exact code point (126) helps when you filter, validate, or sanitize input byte by byte.
All encodings at a glance
| Decimal | 126 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x7E |
| Octal | 0176 |
| Binary | 01111110 |
| HTML numeric entity | ~ |
| URL encoding | %7E |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0x7E |
Code snippets
JavaScript
String.fromCharCode(126); // "~"
126.toString(16); // "7e"Python
chr(126) # '~'
ord(chr(126)) # 126
hex(126) # '0x7e'HTML
~ <!-- numeric entity (no named entity for this character) -->Programming notes
- ▸Code 126 (0x7E); URL-encoded form%7E.
- ▸In HTML the numeric entity is ~.
- ▸When used as literal data in regex or strings, '~' usually needs escaping — check the rules for your language.
Frequently asked questions
What character is ASCII code 126?
ASCII code 126 is the character '~' (Tilde). In hexadecimal it is 0x7E, in octal 0176, and in binary 01111110.
What is 0x7E in ASCII?
Hexadecimal 0x7E equals decimal 126, which is the character '~' (Tilde). To convert hex to ASCII yourself, read the two hex digits as a base-16 number (0x7E = 126) and look up that code point.
How do I write the character with code 126 in code?
In JavaScript use String.fromCharCode(126); in Python use chr(126); in HTML use the numeric entity ~. In a URL it is percent-encoded as %7E, and in UTF-8 it is stored as the byte sequence 0x7E.