3 ms·

Neat! Melons and spruces! This almost triggers my Stack Overflow-honed reflexes to go on a huge rant about the fact that there are no "hex bytes" anywhere in y

by unwind 12y ago

Neat! Melons and spruces! This almost triggers my Stack Overflow-honed reflexes to go on a huge rant about the fact that there are no "hex bytes" anywhere in your computer. But I guess the OP's author really does know that, and is just being colloqial. Still, it seems to create a lot of confusion among beginning programmers, so it's a somewhat unfortunate way of expressing things, in my opinion.

JonnieCache 12y ago
I'm confused. What you mean is that all bytes are hex bytes if you choose to look at them in hex, right?
- acqq 12y ago
  No bytes are hex bytes. Bytes are bytes. You can display them however you like, even one byte as one emoji (what I argue to be too inconvenient representation in another message). But they are also not "emoji bytes." They are just bytes. As in "octets of bits," bit being a unit of information. And hystorically, the bytes weren't even necessarily octets, but some other group of bits.
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    This is semantics. For the record: I know what a byte is, and I am fully aware that numbers exist independently of any representation.
- doodpants 12y ago
  The tools for twiddling the bits of hex bytes are not always as readily available as those for Phillips or flathead bytes. Torx bytes are rarer still, and should be avoided.
windytan 12y ago
It's meant as a shorthand for "hex-encoded bytes".
- userbinator 12y ago
  You're really just interpreting bytes as characters in a different character set. "Visualizing hex bytes" suggests something slightly different, like using an emoji for each of the digits 0-9 and A-F (not much unlike the other proposals for writing hex digits, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_Martin_hexadecimal_notation_proposal.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_Martin_hexadecimal_n... .)
  - acqq 12y ago
    What you believe "hex bytes" suggest to you (but falsely) are actually "nibbles" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble

by unwind 12y ago

JonnieCache 12y ago

I'm confused. What you mean is that all bytes are hex bytes if you choose to look at them in hex, right?

acqq 12y ago
No bytes are hex bytes. Bytes are bytes. You can display them however you like, even one byte as one emoji (what I argue to be too inconvenient representation in another message). But they are also not "emoji bytes." They are just bytes. As in "octets of bits," bit being a unit of information. And hystorically, the bytes weren't even necessarily octets, but some other group of bits.
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  This is semantics. For the record: I know what a byte is, and I am fully aware that numbers exist independently of any representation.
doodpants 12y ago
The tools for twiddling the bits of hex bytes are not always as readily available as those for Phillips or flathead bytes. Torx bytes are rarer still, and should be avoided.

windytan 12y ago

It's meant as a shorthand for "hex-encoded bytes".

userbinator 12y ago
You're really just interpreting bytes as characters in a different character set. "Visualizing hex bytes" suggests something slightly different, like using an emoji for each of the digits 0-9 and A-F (not much unlike the other proposals for writing hex digits, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_Martin_hexadecimal_notation_proposal.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bruce_Martin_hexadecimal_n... .)
- acqq 12y ago
  What you believe "hex bytes" suggest to you (but falsely) are actually "nibbles" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble