Hexadecimal

Written representation

History of written representations

Bruce Alan Martin's hexadecimal notation proposal^[11]

The use of the letters A through F to represent the digits above 9 was not universal in the early history of computers.

• During the 1950s, some installations favored using the digits 0 through 5 with an overline to denote the values 10–15 as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
• The SWAC (1950)^[12] and Bendix G-15 (1956)^[13][12] computers used the lowercase letters u, v, w, x, y and z for the values 10 to 15.
• The ILLIAC I (1952) computer used the uppercase letters K, S, N, J, F and L for the values 10 to 15.^[14][12]
• The Librascope LGP-30 (1956) used the letters F, G, J, K, Q and W for the values 10 to 15.^[15][12]
• The Honeywell Datamatic D-1000 (1957) used the lowercase letters b, c, d, e, f, and g whereas the Elbit 100 (1967) used the uppercase letters B, C, D, E, F and G for the values 10 to 15.^[12]
• The Monrobot XI (1960) used the letters S, T, U, V, W and X for the values 10 to 15.^[12]
• The NEC parametron computer NEAC 1103 (1960) used the letters D, G, H, J, K (and possibly V) for values 10–15.^[16]
• The Pacific Data Systems 1020 (1964) used the letters L, C, A, S, M and D for the values 10 to 15.^[12]
• New numeric symbols and names were introduced in the Bibi-binary notation by Boby Lapointe in 1968. This notation did not become very popular.
• Bruce Alan Martin of Brookhaven National Laboratory considered the choice of A–F "ridiculous". In a 1968 letter to the editor of the CACM, he proposed an entirely new set of symbols based on the bit locations, which did not gain much acceptance.^[11]
• Soviet programmable calculators Б3-34 (1980) and similar used the symbols "−", "L", "C", "Г", "E", " " (space) for the values 10 to 15 on their displays.
• Seven-segment display decoder chips used various schemes for outputting values above nine. The Texas Instruments 7446/7447/7448/7449 and 74246/74247/74248/74249 use truncated versions of "2", "3", "4", "5" and "6" for the values 10 to 14. Value 15 (1111 binary) was blank.^[17]

Verbal and digital representations

There are no traditional numerals to represent the quantities from ten to fifteen – letters are used as a substitute – and most European languages lack non-decimal names for the numerals above ten. Even though English has names for several non-decimal powers (pair for the first binary power, score for the first vigesimal power, dozen, gross and great gross for the first three duodecimal powers), no English name describes the hexadecimal powers (decimal 16, 256, 4096, 65536, ... ). Some people read hexadecimal numbers digit by digit like a phone number, or using the NATO phonetic alphabet, the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, or a similar ad hoc system.

Hexadecimal finger-counting scheme

Systems of counting on digits have been devised for both binary and hexadecimal. Arthur C. Clarke suggested using each finger as an on/off bit, allowing finger counting from zero to 1023₁₀ on ten fingers. Another system for counting up to FF₁₆ (255₁₀) is illustrated on the right.

Signs

The hexadecimal system can express negative numbers the same way as in decimal: −2A to represent −42₁₀ and so on.

Hexadecimal can also be used to express the exact bit patterns used in the processor, so a sequence of hexadecimal digits may represent a signed or even a floating point value. This way, the negative number −42₁₀ can be written as FFFF FFD6 in a 32-bit CPU register (in two's-complement), as C228 0000 in a 32-bit FPU register or C045 0000 0000 0000 in a 64-bit FPU register (in the IEEE floating-point standard).

Hexadecimal exponential notation

Just as decimal numbers can be represented in exponential notation, so too can hexadecimal numbers. By convention, the letter P (or p, for "power") represents times two raised to the power of, whereas E (or e) serves a similar purpose in decimal as part of the E notation. The number after the P is decimal and represents the binary exponent.

Usually the number is normalised so that the leading hexadecimal digit is 1 (unless the value is exactly 0).

Example: 1.3DEp42 represents 1.3DE₁₆ × 2⁴².

Hexadecimal exponential notation is required by the IEEE 754-2008 binary floating-point standard. This notation can be used for floating-point literals in the C99 edition of the C programming language.^[18] Using the %a or %A conversion specifiers, this notation can be produced by implementations of the printf family of functions following the C99 specification^[19] and Single Unix Specification (IEEE Std 1003.1) POSIX standard.^[20]

Binary conversion

Most computers manipulate binary data, but it is difficult for humans to work with the large number of digits for even a relatively small binary number. Although most humans are familiar with the base 10 system, it is much easier to map binary to hexadecimal than to decimal because each hexadecimal digit maps to a whole number of bits (4₁₀). This example converts 1111₂ to base ten. Since each position in a binary numeral can contain either a 1 or a 0, its value may be easily determined by its position from the right:

• 0001₂ = 1₁₀
• 0010₂ = 2₁₀
• 0100₂ = 4₁₀
• 1000₂ = 8₁₀

Therefore:

With little practice, mapping 1111₂ to F₁₆ in one step becomes easy: see table in Written representation. The advantage of using hexadecimal rather than decimal increases rapidly with the size of the number. When the number becomes large, conversion to decimal is very tedious. However, when mapping to hexadecimal, it is trivial to regard the binary string as 4-digit groups and map each to a single hexadecimal digit.

This example shows the conversion of a binary number to decimal, mapping each digit to the decimal value, and adding the results.

Compare this to the conversion to hexadecimal, where each group of four digits can be considered independently, and converted directly:

The conversion from hexadecimal to binary is equally direct.

Other simple conversions

Although quaternary (base 4) is little used, it can easily be converted to and from hexadecimal or binary. Each hexadecimal digit corresponds to a pair of quaternary digits and each quaternary digit corresponds to a pair of binary digits. In the above example 5 E B 5 2₁₆ = 11 32 23 11 02₄.

The octal (base 8) system can also be converted with relative ease, although not quite as trivially as with bases 2 and 4. Each octal digit corresponds to three binary digits, rather than four. Therefore we can convert between octal and hexadecimal via an intermediate conversion to binary followed by regrouping the binary digits in groups of either three or four.

Division-remainder in source base

As with all bases there is a simple algorithm for converting a representation of a number to hexadecimal by doing integer division and remainder operations in the source base. In theory, this is possible from any base, but for most humans only decimal and for most computers only binary (which can be converted by far more efficient methods) can be easily handled with this method.

Let d be the number to represent in hexadecimal, and the series h_ih_i−1...h₂h₁ be the hexadecimal digits representing the number.

1. i ← 1
2. h_i ← d mod 16
3. d ← (d − h_i) / 16
4. If d = 0 (return series h_i) else increment i and go to step 2

"16" may be replaced with any other base that may be desired.

The following is a JavaScript implementation of the above algorithm for converting any number to a hexadecimal in String representation. Its purpose is to illustrate the above algorithm. To work with data seriously, however, it is much more advisable to work with bitwise operators.

function toHex(d) {
  var r = d % 16;
  if (d - r == 0) {
    return toChar(r);
  }
  return toHex( (d - r)/16 ) + toChar(r);
}

function toChar(n) {
  const alpha = "0123456789ABCDEF";
  return alpha.charAt(n);
}

Addition and multiplication

A hexadecimal multiplication table

It is also possible to make the conversion by assigning each place in the source base the hexadecimal representation of its place value and then performing multiplication and addition to get the final representation. That is, to convert the number B3AD to decimal one can split the hexadecimal number into its digits: B (11₁₀), 3 (3₁₀), A (10₁₀) and D (13₁₀), and then get the final result by multiplying each decimal representation by 16^p, where p is the corresponding hex digit position, counting from right to left, beginning with 0. In this case we have B3AD = (11 × 16³) + (3 × 16²) + (10 × 16¹) + (13 × 16⁰), which is 45997 base 10.

Tools for conversion

Most modern computer systems with graphical user interfaces provide a built-in calculator utility, capable of performing conversions between various radices, in general including hexadecimal.

In Microsoft Windows, the Calculator utility can be set to Scientific mode (called Programmer mode in some versions), which allows conversions between radix 16 (hexadecimal), 10 (decimal), 8 (octal) and 2 (binary), the bases most commonly used by programmers. In Scientific Mode, the on-screen numeric keypad includes the hexadecimal digits A through F, which are active when "Hex" is selected. In hex mode, however, the Windows Calculator supports only integers.

Rational numbers

As with other numeral systems, the hexadecimal system can be used to represent rational numbers, although repeating expansions are common since sixteen (10_hex) has only a single prime factor (two):

where an overline denotes a recurring pattern.

For any base, 0.1 (or "1/10") is always equivalent to one divided by the representation of that base value in its own number system. Thus, whether dividing one by two for binary or dividing one by sixteen for hexadecimal, both of these fractions are written as 0.1. Because the radix 16 is a perfect square (4²), fractions expressed in hexadecimal have an odd period much more often than decimal ones, and there are no cyclic numbers (other than trivial single digits). Recurring digits are exhibited when the denominator in lowest terms has a prime factor not found in the radix; thus, when using hexadecimal notation, all fractions with denominators that are not a power of two result in an infinite string of recurring digits (such as thirds and fifths). This makes hexadecimal (and binary) less convenient than decimal for representing rational numbers since a larger proportion lie outside its range of finite representation.

All rational numbers finitely representable in hexadecimal are also finitely representable in decimal, duodecimal and sexagesimal: that is, any hexadecimal number with a finite number of digits has a finite number of digits when expressed in those other bases. Conversely, only a fraction of those finitely representable in the latter bases are finitely representable in hexadecimal. For example, decimal 0.1 corresponds to the infinite recurring representation 0.199999999999... in hexadecimal. However, hexadecimal is more efficient than bases 12 and 60 for representing fractions with powers of two in the denominator (e.g., decimal one sixteenth is 0.1 in hexadecimal, 0.09 in duodecimal, 0;3,45 in sexagesimal and 0.0625 in decimal).

Irrational numbers

The table below gives the expansions of some common irrational numbers in decimal and hexadecimal.

Powers

Powers of two have very simple expansions in hexadecimal. The first sixteen powers of two are shown below.

Etymology

The word hexadecimal is composed of hexa-, derived from the Greek ἕξ (hex) for six, and -decimal, derived from the Latin for tenth. Webster's Third New International online derives hexadecimal as an alteration of the all-Latin sexadecimal (which appears in the earlier Bendix documentation). The earliest date attested for hexadecimal in Merriam-Webster Collegiate online is 1954, placing it safely in the category of international scientific vocabulary (ISV). It is common in ISV to mix Greek and Latin combining forms freely. The word sexagesimal (for base 60) retains the Latin prefix. Donald Knuth has pointed out that the etymologically correct term is senidenary (or possibly, sedenary), from the Latin term for grouped by 16. (The terms binary, ternary and quaternary are from the same Latin construction, and the etymologically correct terms for decimal and octal arithmetic are denary and octonary, respectively.)^[21] Alfred B. Taylor used senidenary in his mid-1800s work on alternative number bases, although he rejected base 16 because of its "incommodious number of digits".^[22][23] Schwartzman notes that the expected form from usual Latin phrasing would be sexadecimal, but computer hackers would be tempted to shorten that word to sex.^[24] The etymologically proper Greek term would be hexadecadic / ἑξαδεκαδικός / hexadekadikós (although in Modern Greek, decahexadic / δεκαεξαδικός / dekaexadikos is more commonly used).

Use in Chinese culture

The traditional Chinese units of weight were base-16. For example, one jīn (斤) in the old system equals sixteen taels. The suanpan (Chinese abacus) can be used to perform hexadecimal calculations.

Primary numeral system

As with the duodecimal system, there have been occasional attempts to promote hexadecimal as the preferred numeral system. These attempts often propose specific pronunciation and symbols for the individual numerals.^[25] Some proposals unify standard measures so that they are multiples of 16.^[26][27][28]

An example of unified standard measures is hexadecimal time, which subdivides a day by 16 so that there are 16 "hexhours" in a day.^[28]