Hexadecimal describes a base-16 number system. That is, it describes a numbering system containing 16 sequential numbers as base units (including 0) before adding a new position for the next number. (Note that we're using "16" here as a decimal number to explain a number that would be "10" in hexadecimal.) The hexadecimal numbers are 0-9 and then use the letters A-F. We show the equivalence of binary, decimal, and hexadecimal numbers in the table below.
Hexadecimal is a convenient way to express binary numbers in modern computers in which a byte is almost always defined as containing eight binary digits. When showing the contents of computer storage (for example, when getting a core dump of storage in order to debug
a new computer program or when expressing a string of text characters or a string of binary values in coding a program or HTML page), one hexadecimal digit can represent the arrangement of four binary digits. Two hexadecimal digits can represent eight binary digits, or a byte.
| Binary | Decimal | Hexadecimal |
|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 10 | 2 | 2 |
| 11 | 3 | 3 |
| 100 | 4 | 4 |
| 101 | 5 | 5 |
| 110 | 6 | 6 |
| 111 | 7 | 7 |
| 1000 | 8 | 8 |
| 1001 | 9 | 9 |
| 1010 | 10 | A |
| 1011 | 11 | B |
| 1100 | 12 | C |
| 1101 | 13 | D |
| 1110 | 14 | E |
| 1111 | 15 | F |
| 10000 | 16 | 10 |
| 10001 | 17 | 11 |
| etc | etc | etc |
This was last updated in June 1998
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