Hexadecimal is a way of expressing the value of 4 bit with one number or digit. It does not assign a meaning to the data.
It could be a binary number, a packed decimal number, a floating point number (hex float or decimal float or ???), ASCII or UTF-8 characters, EBCDIC characters, or a z/Series instruction, On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote: > The point is that people mis-use the word hex as though it described a type > of data. > > "Field X contains character data" -- quite possibly true. > "Field Y contains floating point data" -- quite possibly true. > "Field Z contains hex data." -- No, there is no such thing as "hex data" (or > perhaps more correctly, the assertion is a truism -- all data is hex data). > > Usually people say "hex data" (imprecisely) when they should say > "unprintable bytes" or "otherwise uncharacterized or unrecognized data": > "What's in that field?" "I don't know -- it's just a bunch of hex." > > But as John says, hex is not a data type, it is a way of compactly > representing *any* data, no more, no less. C9C2D4 makes a certain amount of > sense to those of us in this industry. 110010011100001011010100 is the same > thing but much harder to wrap your arms around. > > Charles > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) > Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 2:55 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Data Conversion > > In > <cae1xxdghzfrrsvdf5u83dmhsgnte12b8akd3u0erbzjkqo3...@mail.gmail.com>, > on 09/18/2014 > at 11:21 AM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> said: > >>Except for IBM's Hexadecimal Floating Point, which in fact does real >>hexadecimal (instead of binary of decimal) arithmetic, hexadecimal is >>not a data type at all: it is a compact external representation of bit >>strings, any instance of which can have different interpretations in >>different contexts. > > Hexadecimal is most certainly a data type, although not one generally > applicable to zArchitecture. Both decimal and hexadecimal data can be > manipulated without binary logic elements, although I can't imagine wanting > to do so except on a demo mechanical device. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
