Hexadecimal

[Wouter de Waal]

> So 8 ozs of gold in hexidecimal weight the same as 5 oz of gold
>in our "normal" system.

Nope. 8 oz gold is always equal to 8 other oz of gold (or feathers). The
issue is where it becomes 10 ounces.

In base 10, if you have 9 and you add 1, you get 10. Now, in base, say, 8,
if you have 7 and you add one you get... 10! And in base 2, if you have *1*
and you add 1 you get 10. Remember, that's "one-oh" and *not* "ten", else it
gets really confusing.

In base 16 (hex) you have 15 and you add one to get 10 (one-oh). The numbers
10 (ten) to 15 are written as a-f to not confuse matters.

You can represent computer-type values in any multiple-of-two base,
2,4,8,16,256 etc. Initially they used octal (base 8) but when most computers
started working with 8-bit bytes this got too clumsy (an 8 bit number would
be 2 and a half octal numbers, so a 16 bit number in octal could either be
one large octal number or two groups of 2.5 octal characters (0-0377, istr).
Thence the split-octal system where 255 would be 0377 but 256 would be 0001
0000 and not 0400. So they switched to hex.

Wouter