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ASCII World
BS

Backspace

ControlASCII 8 | Hex 0x08 | U+0008
BS (code 8) moves the cursor one position backward without deleting the character underneath. In early printers, sending a character followed by BS and an underscore produced underlining. The Ctrl+H keystroke generates BS, which is why some older Unix systems treat Ctrl+H as backspace. Terminal emulators map the Backspace key to either BS (0x08) or DEL (0x7F) depending on configuration, and mismatched settings are a frequent source of "backspace produces ^H" bugs.

ASCII Code

Decimal
8
Hexadecimal
0x08
Octal
10
Binary
0000 1000

Unicode

Code Point
U+0008
Escape
\u0008
UTF-8 Hex
0xE2 0x90 0x88
UTF-8 Binary
111000101001000010001000
UTF-16
0x0008
UTF-32
0x00000008

HTML Entities

Numeric

Hex


How to Type

HTML Entity

Unicode InputU+0008

Source Code Representations

C / Java
"\u0008"
CSS
\0008
JavaScript
"\u0008"
Perl
\x{0008}
Python 2
u"\u0008"
Python 3
\u0008
Ruby
\u{0008}

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ASCII code 8?
ASCII code 8 represents the Backspace character. In hexadecimal it is 0x08, in binary 0000 1000, and in octal 10. This is a non-printable control character used for device signaling and data transmission control.
How do I type ASCII 8 on a keyboard?
Control characters are typically entered using Ctrl key combinations. For example, Ctrl+H produces ASCII 8 in most terminal emulators. You can also use the HTML entity  in web pages.