Computer HEX.......?

Question

Can someone please explain Computer HEX to me in simple terms?

Cheers

Answer 1

Hexadecimal is a base-16 counting system. Regular numbers are base 10, which means you have 10 different digits (0..9) and add an extra when you get to 10. For Hex, you have 16 different digits (0..9 plus A, B, C, D, E, F) and add extra when you get to 16. So "10" in hex equals 16 in decimal numbers.

Hex is convenient for computers because of it's relationship to powers of 2 (binary). The number 255 is "FF" in Hex (2^8) and "FFFF" is 65535 or 2^16.

Answer 2

Read Mr Ed's answer, for it is the way of the Hex :)

HEX:

1      =   1    

2      =   2    

3      =   3    

4      =   4

5      =   5

6      =   6

7      =   7

8      =   8

9      =   9

10    =   A

11    =   B

12    =   C

13    =   D

14    =   E

15    =   F

I would add that FF = 256 in decimal and = 11111111 in Binary.  Hex can easily be converted to and from binary, which is the native numbering system of the computer.

you can take a binary value and break it into sections of 4 digits (starting from the right)

Each set of 4 binary digits will give a value between 0 and 15 (or 0-F hex.)

example:

Binary 1101101111111001 => 1101  1011  1111 1001

=> as decimal = 13  11 15  09  => hex = DBF9

Hope that helps :)