I just asked this question and it got me thinking if there is any reason
1)why you would assign a int variable using hexidecimal or octal instead of decimal and
2)what are the difference between the different way of assignment
int a=0x28ff1c; // hexideciaml
int a=10; //decimal (the most commonly used way)
int a=012177434; // octal
You may have some constants that are more easily understood when written in hexadecimal.
Bitflags, for example, in hexadecimal are compact and easily (for some values of easily) understood, since there's a direct correspondence 4 binary digits => 1 hex digit - for this reason, in general the hexadecimal representation is useful when you are doing bitwise operations (e.g. masking).
In a similar fashion, in several cases integers may be internally divided in some fields, for example often colors are represented as a 32 bit integer that goes like this: 0xAARRGGBB (or 0xAABBGGRR); also, IP addresses: each piece of IP in the dotted notation is two hexadecimal digits in the "32-bit integer" notation (usually in such cases unsigned integers are used to avoid messing with the sign bit).
In some code I'm working on at the moment, for each pixel in an image I have a single byte to use to store "accessory information"; since I have to store some flags and a small number, I use the least significant 4 bits to store the flags, the 4 most significant ones to store the number. Using hexadecimal notations it's immediate to write the appropriate masks and shifts: byte & 0x0f gives me the 4 LS bits for the flags, (byte & 0xf0)>>4 gives me the 4 MS bits (re-shifted in place).
I've never seen octal used for anything besides IOCCC and UNIX permissions masks (although in the last case they are actually useful, as you probably know if you ever used chmod); probably their inclusion in the language comes from the fact that C was initially developed as the language to write UNIX.
By default, integer literals are of type Sorry, brainfart. I checked the standard right now, it goes like this:int, while hexadecimal literals are of type unsigned int or larger if unsigned int isn't large enough to hold the specified value. So, when assigning a hexadecimal literal to an int there's an implicit conversion (although it won't impact the performance, any decent compiler will perform the cast at compile time).
u suffix, are always signed; their type is the smallest that can represent them between int, long int, long long int;unsigned type; their actual type is the smallest one that can represent the value between int, unsigned int, long int, unsigned long int, long long int, unsigned long long int.(C++11, §2.14.2, ¶2 and Table 6)
The difference may be relevant for overload resolution1, but it's not particularly important when you are just assigning a literal to a variable. Still, keep in mind that you may have valid integer constants that are larger than an int, i.e. assignment to an int will result in signed integer overflow; anyhow, any decent compiler should be able to warn you in these cases.
Let's say that on our platform integers are in 2's complement representation, int is 16 bit wide and long is 32 bit wide; let's say we have an overloaded function like this:
void a(unsigned int i)
{
std::cout<<"unsigned";
}
void a(int i)
{
std::cout<<"signed";
}
Then, calling a(1) and a(0x1) will produce the same result (signed), but a(32768) will print signed and a(0x10000) will print unsigned.
It matters from a readability standpoint - which one you choose expresses your intention.
If you're treating the variable as an integral type, you know, like 2+2=4, you use the decimal representation. It's intuitive and straight-forward.
If you're using it as a bitmask, you can use hexa, octal or even binary. For example, you'll know
int a = 0xFF;
will have the last 8 bits set to 1. You'll know that
int a = 0xF0;
is (...)11110000, but you couldn't directly say the same thing about
int a = 240;
although they are equivalent. It just depends on what you use the numbers for.
well the truth is it doesn't matter if you want it on decimal, octal or hexadecimal its just a representation and for your information, numbers in computers are stored in binary(so they are just 0's and 1's) which you can use also to represent a number. so its just a matter of representation and readability.
NOTE: Well in some of C++ debuggers(in my experience) I assigned a number as a decimal representation but in my debugger it is shown as hexadecimal.
It's similar to the assignment of and integer this way:
int a = int(5);
int b(6);
int c = 3;
it's all about preference, and when it breaks down you're just doing the same thing. Some might choose octal or hex to go along with their program that manipulates that type of data.
