It is often used in computing and digital systems because it is a convenient way to represent binary data in a more human-readable form. Hexadecimal, also known as hex, is a numbering system that uses a base of 16. Most modern computer systems with graphical user interfaces provide a built-in calculator utility, capable of performing conversions between various radices, in general including hexadecimal.

In addition, it is much easier for humans to read hexadecimal numbers than binary numbers, and it is not much more difficult for computer professionals to read hexadecimal numbers than decimal numbers. The hexadecimal system is commonly used by programmers to describe locations in memory because it can represent every byte (i.e., eight bits) as two consecutive hexadecimal digits instead of the eight digits that would be required by binary (i.e., base 2) numbers and the three digits that would be required with decimal numbers. Thus, for example, the decimal number 11 is represented by B in the hexadecimal system and decimal 14 is represented by E. The numbers 0 through 9 are the same in both systems however, the decimal numbers 10 through 15 are represented by the letters A through F.

Hexadecimal (Hex) 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.

Convert hexadecimal to text