I wrote two blocks that allow for conversion between binary and decimal numbers!
(the bin$$\to$$decimal was easy, but the decimal$$\to$$binary was not.)
That's amazing!
However, I found a much simpler way to convert decimal to binary:
But yours are still very good. 
WAY easier... :-)
Good work - just one trivial thing - convention says to use 0b not 0B
...runs away 
Huh. Didn't know that.
JFI Just found the old reporter I made before I discovered the 0b trick
BTW There's another regular forum person who might turn up and have words to say about the phrase "decimal to binary" - be warned
Who are you talking about?
Smart!
Tiny!
i have no clue what you are talking about
That would be me.
There is no such thing as converting binary to decimal, or vice versa.
First, a couple of definitions.
A number is, you know, how much or how many of something. Three bananas, or three computers, or three Snap! projects: all of those are part of what three means.
A numeral is the representation of a number as text. Usually that means positional notation in some base: decimal or binary or hexadecimal or something else. But it can also be Roman numerals, or Cuneiform, or whatever.
Now we have to talk about levels of abstraction. Namely, as far as we are concerned as programmers, what's inside the computer are numbers. Below the hardware abstraction, there are voltages on wires, and so on. But only electrical engineers know about those things. For us, the hardware has numbers inside it. Don't object yet, bear with me and see where this takes us. You can object later if you still want to.
There are only two relevant kinds of conversion: numeral to number, and number to numeral. The first of those is how the computer deals with input from the user. The user types in a string of characters, namely, digits in some base or other, 0-9 or 0-1 or 0-9a-f, or if we're converting a base three numeral to a number, digits 0-2. The other direction is used for output to the user. There's a number inside the computer, and it wants to show it to a human being, so it has to convert the number into a text string full of digits in the appropriate base.
This simple, lucid, perfect understanding -- computers understand numbers, human beings understand numerals -- is complicated (in people's minds; the computer understands it perfectly) by the fact that computers have to show numbers to human beings, and computers have to allow people to tell it numbers. But human beings don't understand numbers, so the computer has to translate to and from numerals. And in particular, a programming language has to do that.
So, in your favorite programming language, when you see
that doesn't mean that inside the computer, in the variable FOO, there's an "8" and a "7." No, what's in that variable is the number eighty-seven. Actually, what's inside the computer is a bag with eighty-seven marbles in it (really tiny marbles), in a cubbyhole with a piece of paper saying "foo" taped to it. But you, a mere human being, wouldn't understand if the variable watcher had a bag of eighty-seven marbles in it. Snap! has to show you an "8" and a "7"; that is, it has to convert the number (a bag of marbles) into a numeral (a text string).
Because of this, when I tell you that Snap! has to convert the value of FOO from number to base-10 numeral, you think, "it's already a base-10 numeral! See, there it is, on the stage." Yes, but in a sense the variable watcher is lying to you; there's no string of digits in FOO.
Furthermore, like some other programming languages but not most of them, Snap! does automatic conversion between numbers and numerals, depending on the domain of the function you call. So, FOO is a number. You're expected to say something like 
, in which case the computer will count out another bag of eighty-seven marbles, then put in four more marbles, producing a bag of ninety-one marbles. But Snap! also lets you say 
. JOIN expects text strings as inputs, and concatenates them. But it can't concatenate the string "th" to a bag of marbles. First, implicitly, it has to construct the string "87" to represent the number in human-readable form, then it can do what you asked for, namely, concatenate "th" to that string. This automatic conversion is super convenient, but it doesn't help you understand that there's a difference between a number and a string of digits.
As an exercise to help you understand this, try defining the following procedure:
Now it should be clear to you that the variable BAR contains a string of characters, not a number. You can sensibly write a procedure to translate that string of digits to a number, ignoring the "x" at the beginning and at the end. (I put them at both ends because it makes it equally easy to write procedures that read the digits from left to right or from right to left.)
Okay, I'm going to write procedures
If you want to write them yourself, stop reading here!
To take care of a minor detail first, if we happen to be using a base larger than ten, we have to deal with using letters as digits, a=ten, b=eleven, and so on. So, here are helper procedures for that:
And in the other direction:
Note that I'm bending over backward not to use implicit conversion between small integers and digit characters. That is, I could have said
relying on Snap! to convert the value three into the numeral "3" when needed. But I'm trying to keep crystal clear what the computer actually has to do in order to accomplish that conversion. In the old days, those of us who implemented programming languages or operating systems had the ASCII codes for "0" (0o60), "A" (0o101), and "a" (0o141) memorized. (We thought in octal, not hex, because our computers were 36 bits wide.) So we didn't have to call 
and so on.
Okay, that took up enough space to give the people who want to write the conversion procedures time to look away. Here we go:
Don't forget:
This version of NUMERAL➞NUMBER is implemented the cool way, which involves peeling off the rightmost digit of the numeral, and sending the rest of the numeral (all but the last digit) to NUMERAL➞NUMBER recursively, multiplying the result by the base, whatever it is, to account for the fact that that smaller numeral is shifted left one place in the overall numeral.
The experts at EDC tell me, unanimously, that kids, even teenagers, find this recursive algorithm hard to understand. So, feel free to write a version that multiplies each digit by a power of the base corresponding to its position in the numeral.
But please note that this procedure rigorously respects the domain and range of every subprocedure it uses. For example, since NUMERAL➞NUMBER reports a number, it's okay to multiply the result of the recursive call by BASE, an arithmetic operation. But since functions such as ALL BUT LAST LETTER take a text string as input, it's okay to use NUMERAL, which is a text string, as input to them. It wouldn't be okay, for example, to multiply NUMERAL by BASE.
Time for the inverse function.
I used 5+7 as the input to make it clear that the input is a number, the result of an arithmetic operation, not a string of digits. What the procedure reports, though, is a string of digits.
There's a non-recursive way to do this, also, but it's too horrible to contemplate. Try it if you like.
So, what would "decimal to binary" actually mean? This:
Take a base ten numeral (a string of digits), convert it to a number (which has no base; it's a bag of marbles), then convert that number to a numeral in base two. Binary to decimal would be the same code but with the 10 and the 2 swapped.
So if base converting doesn't exist, then by that logic bases don't exist. But that would mean numbers and numerals don't exist, because you can't use a non-existent operation on things that do exist, like bases to numbers/numerals, or base conversion to bases. And if BASE converting doesn't exist, OTHER conversions don't exist, etc.
A statement like "There is no such thing as converting from binary to decimal..." is an exaggeration if taken literally, and thus susceptible to misinterpretation. What I picked up from @bh's post is that while numbers are relative to a base, the underlying numbers are base independent.
BTW there ought to be a separate category in this forum for his lectures - I propose: "Ex Cathedra". 
........Ok.
This makes sense. I'll try making this number representation converter that you where explaining.
Maybe for you, but for me, it's like trying to lap 10+ P rank PTUCE Post-4.0 and you get to lap 9, and Paintface appears, and you know your run is over.
What? Is that a reference to something?
Okay. I guess I Just don't get it.
... Paintface appears on Lap 9, hence why I said what I said. He acts like Scoutdigo Death Mode Pizzaface.
Wut?
Bases definitely exist. But when people think they are converting, e.g., binary to decimal, what they're really doing is converting binary (a kind of numeral) to number. Even if you just prepend "0b" to it and let Snap! do the conversion for you, Snap! is converting your binary numeral to a number. It's just that, as I explained, Snap! has to show you that number in a form you'll understand, so instead of a picture of a bag full of microscopic-size marbles, it uses a decimal numeral.
So, numerals in bases are an abstractionname overof numbers?
(I mean "There are * * * * many" is a number, but "4" is the convenient abstractionname.)