When converting binary into hexadecimal or octal we sometimes find that it does not always fit into multiples of 3 or 4. The binary 101 may provide problems to convert into hexadecimal (as it is not 4 bits). Even more difficult would be the binary 1 0110 1101. This problem can be easily solved by padding out the binary with extra 0's. So 1 0110 1101 would become 0001 0110 1101. Let us work through this to get a better understanding.

It is important not to pad out from the right as this would give an incorrect answer. Below is this example shown.

The exact same padding out can be used for octal. Just in this case you would pad out to ensure that the binary was always a multiple of 3.