Binary-Coded Decimal

Abbreviated as BCD, binary-coded decimal is a format for representing decimal numbers (integers) in which each digit is represented by four bits (a nibble ). For example, the number 375 would be represented as:

0011 0111 0101

One advantage of BCD over binary representations is that there is no limit to the size of a number. To add another digit, you just need to add a new 4-bit sequence. In contrast, numbers represented in binary format are generally limited to the largest number that can be represented by 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits.