O is not a hexadecimal number - even if it was "BAD F00D" it still wouldn't be a full 32-bit word - it's also not use by existing libraries (libgmalloc) cafe b

O is not a hexadecimal number - even if it was "BAD F00D" it still wouldn't be a full 32-bit word - it's also not use by existing libraries (libgmalloc) cafe babe, dada dada would just as well as dead beef In short, either you are familiar with magic numbers or you're not. If you're not, you're certainly not qualified to work on anything really low-level and may not be qualified to do C/C++ development in userland either (without strong evidence to the contrary).