Hexadecimal

In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal (also base-16, hexa, or hex) is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F (or a through f) to represent values ten to fifteen. Its primary use is as a human friendly representation of binary coded values, so it is often used in digital electronics and computer engineering. Since each hexadecimal digit represents four binary digits (bits)—also called a nibble—it is a compact and easily translated shorthand to express values in base two. In digital computing, hexadecimal is primarily used to represent bytes. Attempts to represent the 256 possible byte values by other means have led to problems. Directly representing each possible byte value with a single character representation runs into unprintable control characters in the ASCII character set. Even if a standard set of printable characters were devised for every byte value, neither users nor input hardware are equipped to handle 256 unique characters. Most hex editing software displays each byte as a single character, but unprintable characters are usually ... More about Hexadecimal