It felt a bit like cheating to split this post up so I figured I would just
cover all of the decimal to… functions in one post. Decimal, also known as
base ten, is the numerical base we are most accustomed to. From time to time we
need to convert a decimal number to another number system like binary or hex.
PHP comes with 3 functions for that very purpose as well as a fourth that can be
used to convert between arbitrary bases:
$decimal = 100
echo 'Binary: ' . decbin($decimal) . "n"
echo 'Hexadecimal: ' . dechex($decimal) . "n"
echo 'Octal: ' . decoct($decimal) . "n"
Those are the shorthand functions, which also have related functions to allow
you to go in the other direction as well: bindec(), hexdec() and
octdec().
To do base conversions outside of these common number systems, you can use
base_convert() which takes 3 arguments. First, the number you want to
convert, followed by the base you’re starting with and the base you want to
convert to:
$decimal = 12345
echo 'Base 24: ' . base_convert($decimal, 10, 24
Fun tip, URL shorteners tend to use base conversion to take integer IDs stored
in a database and convert them to a shorter alphanumeric string!
