[Poll] Do you write hexadecimal numbers in upper- or lowercase?

5    14 Aug 2016 22:45 by u/cassis

0xb000b1e5 vs 0xB000B1E5 ?

What's your preferred style? Why?

55 comments

24 u/scandalous-goat 14 Aug 2016 22:58

Upper case, by habit. Also, uppercase letters are closer to the digits in the ASCII table (they're separated by seven symbols) so I feel that they belong together.

6 u/SaneGoatiSwear 14 Aug 2016 23:33

dat feelz...

5 u/chmod 15 Aug 2016 00:59

Always uppercase.

9 u/totes_magotes 14 Aug 2016 23:43

A55FACE.

B00B1E5

Any questions?

4 u/toobaditworks 15 Aug 2016 21:24

You only listed 7 digits. Hex would be 8. Explain yourself. And put on some pants first.

1 u/totes_magotes 15 Aug 2016 21:35

Significant digits. You don't say 0123, you just say 123. And now it's just my boxers and socks.

7 u/tanukihat 15 Aug 2016 00:06

Lowercase. It distinguishes the letters from the numbers more easily.

1 u/Brian_BeMuch 22 Aug 2016 18:27

But, they're all numbers?

5 u/roznak 14 Aug 2016 22:50

I use lower, makes it more human readable.

3 u/Genghis_Khan 15 Aug 2016 02:38

I would say the opposite is true. This makes up for the non-monospace fonts.

5 u/FeathersMcGraw 14 Aug 2016 23:07

Type, lower. Hand write, upper.

2 u/tame 15 Aug 2016 00:39

Hah, same.

5 u/spookybm 14 Aug 2016 23:53

I use binary....
0b1011000000001011000111100101
because I actually want to see what is being transmitted, and test it against the oscilloscope.

4 u/scorinth 15 Aug 2016 00:11

I was certain you were joking until you mentioned the O-scope.

Embedded systems are a hell of a thing.

3 u/spookybm 15 Aug 2016 03:05

It really is frustrating when I can't even get the RS232 transmission correct... I want to give up.

4 u/GrislyAtoms 14 Aug 2016 22:47

Lower, because it involves less key presses, and makes the letters stand out more.

Edit:

Just curious about the reasoning behind the downvote? Obviously someone has a differing opinion. I'd like to know what it is. Don't just downvote and run; that's fucking lame.

3 u/totes_magotes 15 Aug 2016 04:01

BECAUSE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS WHIP OUT THE CAPS. That's what the Billy Mays key is for!

4 u/zak_the_mac 14 Aug 2016 23:11

I originally preferred upper case, cause capital letters look more like numbers, so the number looked more consistent.

But then I found that everyone used lower case (in C++ code), so I gave up and switched to lower case.

2 u/prairie 15 Aug 2016 08:56

I switched to lowercase for the same reason, that capital letters look more like numbers, e.g. B8BA4A4B8B8 versus b8ba4a4b8b8.

3 u/epsilona01 14 Aug 2016 23:17

I use upper in Windows and lower in *NIX, usually.

3 u/Lag-wagon 14 Aug 2016 23:31

Upper

3 u/LOLATU 14 Aug 2016 23:43

Upper, also, nice boobies.

2 u/ThirteenthZodiac 15 Aug 2016 00:17

Uppercase.

In typing it makes them stand out more and makes it obvious to me that the string in question is a hex string and not alphabetic.

In handwriting, I write everything in uppercase.

2 u/Master_Admin 15 Aug 2016 00:40

Depends how burnt out I am. If I'm really tired of programming for the day I'll go to lower but usually I do upper

2 u/Tommstein 15 Aug 2016 00:57

Uppercase. What the fuck kind of question is this?

2 u/weezkitty 15 Aug 2016 03:32

Upper. lowercase looks wrong

2 u/TelescopiumHerscheli 15 Aug 2016 08:39

Generally I don't have to do this very much, and if I do it tends to be in contexts where someone else has already written a number in hex, so I just use the same case that's already been used. If I have to do it on my own I generally use upper case, because that's what I was taught at school.

1 u/nextgenerationhacker 15 Aug 2016 08:09

Lowercase, most cryptography encryption keys are already long. (256 bits), making it capital would make it longer. I like shorter keys.

0xb000b1e5

2 u/clickbot 15 Aug 2016 09:16

Longer? How?

1 u/nextgenerationhacker 17 Aug 2016 17:55

Use your measuring stick, it will be LONGER.

1 u/clickbot 18 Aug 2016 15:29

Ah. Well, in that case that would depend on what font you use.

If you use a monospace font, the length will be exactly the same. Who uses times fonts in cryptography anyway.

1 u/sctoor 15 Aug 2016 10:47

01ab.23cd.ef45

1 u/TheCompanionCube 15 Aug 2016 12:22

I don't have a case preference, but for 32b numbers please put in some separators ffs: 16#abcd_1234#

1 u/malloryquinn 15 Aug 2016 14:41

Upper for documentation, input, I don't give a fuk

1 u/busyvote 12 Oct 2016 10:45

UPERCASE. Not sure why, it just feels good.