Hexadecimal

In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbols, hexadecimal uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols "0"–"9" to represent values 0 to 9, and "A"–"F" (or alternatively "a"–"f") to represent values from ten to fifteen.

Software developers and system designers widely use hexadecimal numbers because they provide a human-friendly representation of binary-coded values. Each hexadecimal digit represents four bits (binary digits), also known as a nibble (or nybble).^[1] For example, an 8-bit byte can have values ranging from 00000000 to 11111111 (0 to 255 decimal) in binary form, which can be conveniently represented as 00 to FF in hexadecimal.

In mathematics, a subscript is typically used to specify the base. For example, the decimal value 38,994 would be expressed in hexadecimal as 9852₁₆. In programming, several notations denote hexadecimal numbers, usually involving a prefix. The prefix 0x is used in C, which would denote this value as 0x9852.

Hexadecimal is used in the transfer encoding Base16, in which each byte of the plaintext is broken into two 4-bit values and represented by two hexadecimal digits.