What is hexadecimal?
All data within a computer is represented as numbers. Hexadecimal (or simply “hex”) is a better numbering system for viewing this data than the “decimal” numbers everyone is already familiar with. Hexadecimal is one of those computer science concepts that is difficult to understand, until the “aha” moment when you finally understand it. After that point, it becomes second nature. Everybody has a different path to that “aha” moment, so don’t feel bad if you don’t understand the following discussion. However, you must eventually understand hexadecimal, so you really should look it up on the web. The word “decimal” has the root “dec”, meaning “10”. This means that there are 10 digits in this numbering system: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The word “hexadecimal” has the roots “hex” meaning 6 and “dec” meaning 10; add them together and you get 16. This means there are sixteen digits in this numbering system: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F The is useful because all data is stored in a computer as “bi
