ASCII 60
Less-Than Sign (<)
Printable ASCII
Less-than sign. Comparison operator; also opens HTML/XML tags. Must be HTML-encoded as <.
Common uses & context
The character '<' — Less-Than Sign — has ASCII code 60 (0x3C), octal 0074, binary 00111100. Less-than sign. Comparison operator; also opens HTML/XML tags. Must be HTML-encoded as <.
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 %3C), or in HTML (where it is written<). Knowing its exact code point (60) helps when you filter, validate, or sanitize input byte by byte.
All encodings at a glance
| Decimal | 60 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x3C |
| Octal | 0074 |
| Binary | 00111100 |
| HTML numeric entity | < |
| HTML named entity | < |
| URL encoding | %3C |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0x3C |
Code snippets
JavaScript
String.fromCharCode(60); // "<"
60.toString(16); // "3c"Python
chr(60) # '<'
ord(chr(60)) # 60
hex(60) # '0x3c'HTML
< <!-- named entity -->
< <!-- numeric entity -->Programming notes
- ▸Code 60 (0x3C); URL-encoded form%3C.
- ▸In HTML write it as < (named) or < (numeric) to avoid it being parsed as markup.
- ▸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 60?
ASCII code 60 is the character '<' (Less-Than Sign). In hexadecimal it is 0x3C, in octal 0074, and in binary 00111100.
What is 0x3C in ASCII?
Hexadecimal 0x3C equals decimal 60, which is the character '<' (Less-Than Sign). To convert hex to ASCII yourself, read the two hex digits as a base-16 number (0x3C = 60) and look up that code point.
How do I write the character with code 60 in code?
In JavaScript use String.fromCharCode(60); in Python use chr(60); in HTML use the numeric entity < or the named entity <. In a URL it is percent-encoded as %3C, and in UTF-8 it is stored as the byte sequence 0x3C.