ASCII 178
Superscript Two (²)
Latin-1 Supplement
Latin-1 character.
Common uses & context
Decimal 178 (0xB2) is Superscript Two, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255). Latin-1 character. It renders as '²' and its binary byte is 10110010.
This is where single-byte ASCII ends and encoding matters. In Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) '²' is the single byte 0xB2. In UTF-8 — today's default for the web — the same character is the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xB2. Treating a Latin-1 byte as UTF-8 (or vice versa) is the usual reason accented letters and symbols turn into mojibake like é or €. The Unicode code point is U+00B2, and in HTML you can write it as ² or ².
All encodings at a glance
| Decimal | 178 |
| Hexadecimal | 0xB2 |
| Octal | 0262 |
| Binary | 10110010 |
| HTML numeric entity | ² |
| HTML named entity | ² |
| URL encoding | %B2 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xC2 0xB2 |
Code snippets
JavaScript
String.fromCharCode(178); // "²"
178.toString(16); // "b2"Python
chr(178) # control char ²
ord(chr(178)) # 178
hex(178) # '0xb2'HTML
² <!-- named entity -->
² <!-- numeric entity -->Programming notes
- ▸Single byte 0xB2 in Latin-1, but the multi-byte sequence 0xC2 0xB2 in UTF-8 — never assume one byte per character above code 127.
- ▸Unicode code point U+00B2; HTML entity ².
- ▸If '²' shows as mojibake, the encoding declared and the encoding used disagree — align both on UTF-8.
Unicode & UTF-8 note
In Unicode this is U+00B2. In UTF-8 it encodes to the byte sequence 0xC2 0xB2. In legacy Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) it is a single byte 0xB2, which is why Latin-1 files often appear as mojibake when interpreted as UTF-8.
Frequently asked questions
What character is ASCII code 178?
ASCII code 178 is the character '²' (Superscript Two). In hexadecimal it is 0xB2, in octal 0262, and in binary 10110010.
What is 0xB2 in ASCII?
Hexadecimal 0xB2 equals decimal 178, which is the character '²' (Superscript Two). To convert hex to ASCII yourself, read the two hex digits as a base-16 number (0xB2 = 178) and look up that code point.
How do I write the character with code 178 in code?
In JavaScript use String.fromCharCode(178); in Python use chr(178); in HTML use the numeric entity ² or the named entity ². In a URL it is percent-encoded as %B2, and in UTF-8 it is stored as the byte sequence 0xC2 0xB2.
Is '²' part of standard ASCII?
No. Standard ASCII covers codes 0–127 only. '²' is code 178, part of the Latin-1 Supplement (128–255, sometimes called "extended ASCII"). It is a single byte 0xB2 in Latin-1 but a multi-byte sequence (0xC2 0xB2) in UTF-8.