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Tech Help menu SciFiOne main menu Hex (hexidecimal) Explained By John T Burt, Feb 25, 1997 "What Is Hex?" Hex stands for hexadecimal. At its simplest, hex numbers are base 16 (decimal is base 10). Instead to counting from 0 to 9, as we do in decimal, and then adding a column to make 10, counting goes from 0 to F before adding a column. The characters A through F represent the decimal values of 10 through 15 as illustrated below. decimal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Hex 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F Counting proceeds like this. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 20 21 and up as far as one wants to go, just like any other number. Another way to explain hex is, each column in a hex number represents a power of 16. (In decimal each column represents a power of 10.) There's more about this below. "Why Use Hex?" Hex is used because it is the easiest way to represent the value of a standard 8 bit binary computer byte, and there are a lot of those around that need to be represented. "What Is Binary?" Binary numbers are base 2. In binary counting only goes from 0 to 1 before adding a column. It's illustrated below. As you will see, it takes a lot of space to represent a small value in binary. decimal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 binary 0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 Another way to put it is each column in a binary number represents a power of 2. There's more about this below. "How Is Hex Used?" Four binary bits can be represented as a single hex digit as follows.
Thus the eight binary bits of a standard byte can be represented as two simple hex digits as illustrated in the drawing below. There's no way to do this as "elegantly" in decimal.  Binary, Decimal and Hex as Powers.
Related subject - Hex Addition
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