How to pronounce hexadecimal

bzarg.com

12 points·tbabb··5 comments

While amusing, the premise is flawed. 0xF5 is pronounced "two hundred forty-five". Of course, just as with decimal-expressed numbers (e.g. phone numbers), it may sometimes be useful to list the digits; our existing digit names should be sufficient but could certainly be improved for distinctiveness.

It's humor, first and foremost.

But we can think of the words "two hundred forty-five" as meaning `2 * radix^2 + 4 * radix + 5`. We implicitly assume `radix` is ten in spoken English, but the implication in the clip (and the premise of the article) is that radix=16, and the implications of that are followed. There's no reason why the meaning couldn't be inferred from context.

If we were being pedantic, we'd need to come up with new words for every place value, which is way more impractical, and way less funny.

I prefer the abbreviated radio spelling alphabet.

A -> alph -> alphty, B -> brav -> bravty, C -> charl -> charlty, D -> delt -> delty, E -> echo -> echty, F -> fox -> foxty

0x1DE,ADB,EEF is "one hundred delty-echo million, alph hundred delty-beta thousand, echo hundred and echty-fox".

Thanks -- I like this, and I've never heard the -ty ending before.

But just a nit on my part: "and" is usually meant to signify a decimal point, so I think the ending should read "echo hundred echty-fox".

> the ending should read "echo hundred echty-fox".

You can write it either way - it's like potato and potato, harbour and harbor. I was schooled to never omit the 'and'.

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