Can someone please tell me advantages of learning hex, I program a little but I really don't see why hex is in any way importain but a lot of people say that it is, is there any useful things it can do? Also, where can I find a good tutorial or anything on it? Anything helps.
-Neocytrix
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Sometimes in programming you have to work with single bits, shifting, turning bits on/off. If you know binary/hex, you can just understand what's going on with the code without using any calculators. You can see if the number will be negative/positive when converting from signed/unsigned...
If you don't know binary/hex it'll be very hard (doubt if possible) to understand code working with single bits...
I think it's worth learning; it will help you understand a lot of things. Computers internally work with binary, so in a lot of cases you will encounter it. Just example: to understand TCP/IP networking and subnet masks you have to know binary/hex..
I always write binary/hex, coz actually you have to know binary. Hex is just more compact representation of binary. It's very easy to convert hex<->binary.
You use hex a lot for masking bits.
For example, suppose you were reading a 16-bit register from some kind of peripheral, and the peripheral signals an error in bit 10.
To get the error you write (in C++):
...
short unsigned reg = ReadPeripheralReg();
const short unsigned errorBit = 0x0400;
bool hasError = ((reg & errorBit) == errorBit);
...
Of course you could have written
const short unsigned errorBit = 1024;
or
const short unsigned errorBit = 1<<10;
but 0x0400 gives you a more immediate visualization of the 16-bit register.
Low-level programming, which deals with the hardware directly, makes extensive use of the hex notation for numbers.
1 hex digit represents 4 binary digits. Everything at the low level in the machine is binary, either 1 or 0, but keeping track of dozens of these bits (be they addresses, values, whatever) is a pain. For example take a look at this, and try to recite it back without looking:
1101001101101010
not so easy. the same number in hex:
D36A
is a lot easier on the eyes.
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by: PlanetCppPosted on 2003-12-27 at 21:14:43ID: 10006716
its nice to know, any computer science major should at least have some knowledge of it. i cant say that i ever REALLY needed it. that's what calculators are for, run calc, switch to scientific, do hex...
google shows this site, looks ok. shows binary too. if you dont know hex i doubt you know binary.
also nice to know
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