How do binary and hexadecimal numbers work?

James — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 03:20:14 +0000

This post is from a series I'm writing in which we'll learn how computers work, by writing a computer simulator in Javascript. However, I figured an explanation of binary and hexadecimal numbers is useful enough by itself, so here it is!

Before explaining how computers load data into their working space and process it, it's valuable to understand binary and hexadecimal numbers. This is because computer hardware only understands binary values due to the physical characteristics of the electronic circuitry used to implement them. I won't go further into explaining the reasons why computer hardware works with values in binary form, but you can read more about it here.

So what is binary? Binary is a 'base-2 number system'. But what does that mean?

Consider the number system we are all accustomed to using in our everyday lives, which is sometimes called the decimal system or base-10. It uses the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 to represent the first 10 integers (whole-numbers) starting from zero. It is called base-10 because we have 10 digits to work with, from 0 to 9. But what happens after 9? With the number 10 we move over one column to the left, placing a '1' in the 'tens column' followed by a '0' in the 'ones column'. If we continue to increase our number in increments of 1, the digit in the 'ones column' moves through the digits 0-9, until we get to 20, and so on until we eventually get to 100, placing a 1 in the 'hundreds column'.

Binary, or base-2, is much the same, except the only digits we have to work with are 0 and 1. Then how do we count? It's actually the same as in base-10, but after 0, then 1, we get to 10. Why? Because we have moved through all the digits we have to work with in the 'ones column', so we put a 1 in the next column to the left. However, in binary, that column is not the 'tens column', but rather the 'twos column'. In the same way that in the decimal number 20 we are basically saying that we have 'two tens and zero ones', in the binary number 10 we are saying that we have 'one twos and zero ones'. Next comes 11 (one twos and one ones) then 100 (one fours, zero twos, and zero ones).

If it seems confusing that the columns, from right to left are 'ones', 'two', 'fours', rather than 'ones', 'tens', 'hundreds' consider that in base-10 we only need a tens column once we've exhausted all of the digits we can put in the ones column (0-9) once we reach the number 9, and the next whole number after 9 is 10, but in base-2 we only have 0 and 1, so after 0, then 1, we have exhausted all the digits for the ones column, and the next number we want to represent is the number that (in base-10) we would call 'two'. By calling it the 'twos column' we're still using the base-10 name for that number. It's valuable to understand that each number can be represented in both base-2 and base-10, or any other base for that matter, and the only difference is how we write them in digits (or however else we are recording them, such as in the two positions of a switch). As we continue on to larger and larger numbers we have the columns ones, twos, fours, eights, 16s, 32s, 64s and so on. You might recognise these as the powers of 2.

Hexadecimal (base-16) is much like binary and decimal, except that there are 16 digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, and f. After 9 we start using letters of the alphabet to fill out the remaining digits to bring us to a total of 16. This means that as we are counting, after 9 we don't go to 10, but instead a, then b, c, e, and finally f, before getting to 10. Instead of the column to the left of the ones column being the tens column, in hexadecimal it is the '16s column'. Once we have moved through 0 to f in that column (moving through 0 to f in the ones column for each digit in the 16s column), the next column is the 256s, 4096s, 65536s, and so on, moving up in the powers of 16. As the columns in binary (base-2) go up in powers of 2 as we move to the left, and the columns in decimal (base-10) in powers of 10, it makes sense that the columns in hexadecimal go up in powers of 16.

 hex binary decimal
0 0 0
1 1 1
2 10 2
3 11 3
4 100 4
5 101 5
6 110 6
7 111 7
8 1000 8
9 1001 9
a 1010 10
b 1011 11
c 1100 12
d 1101 13
e 1110 14
f 1111 15
10 1 0000 16
11 1 0001 17
12 1 0010 18
13 1 0011 19
14 1 0100 20
15 1 0101 21
16 1 0110 22
17 1 0111 23
18 1 1000 24
19 1 1001 25
1a 1 1010 26
1b 1 1011 27
1c 1 1100 28
1d 1 1101 29
1e 1 1110 30
1f 1 1111 31
20 10 0000 32
21 10 0001 33
... ... ...
3f 11 1111 63
40 100 0000 64
41 100 0001 65
... ... ...
7f 111 1111 127
80 1000 0000 128
81 1000 0001 129
... ... ...
f8 1111 1000 248
f9 1111 1001 249
fa 1111 1010 250
fb 1111 1011 251
fc 1111 1100 252
fd 1111 1101 253
fe 1111 1110 254
ff 1111 1111 255
100 1 0000 0000 256
101 1 0000 0001 257

If you've ever wondered why power-of-2 numbers like 8, 16, 32, 64, and 256 come up a lot in computer programming, have a look at the binary and hex representations which those decimal values line up with. You'll see that there are 16 values (0-15, because we start counting at zero) which can be represented with (or 'fit inside') 4 binary digits, or 1 hex digit, and 256 values (0-255) which fit inside 8 binary digits/2 hex digits.

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James Friend - hexadecimal

How do binary and hexadecimal numbers work?