CODEWITHSUNDEEP
language-agnosticprogramming-languagesbinary-data
Vincent
Vincent

Reputation: 16226

What is a Binary Literal?

Can someone give a clear explanation of what Binary Literal is? What is the difference between binary literals, hexadecimal and binary numbers, strings? What are they used for?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 197

Answers (3)

Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey

Reputation: 180918

Literals: http://cpp.comsci.us/etymology/literals.html.

Literal constants (often referred to as literals or constants) are invariants whose values are implied by their representations

Just as a hexadecimal literal is a string of the form "0xABCD", a binary literal is a string of the form "0b11011011". They can be distinguished from each other by checking the first two characters.

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/language/binary-literals.html

Upvotes: 1

Ed Swangren
Ed Swangren

Reputation: 124790

Because sometimes it's easier to convey the intent of a value in binary. This applies to base 16 as well. They're all numbers when it comes down to it, but if I want to assign a flag with multiple bits set, something like this seems clearer than the alternative(s).

flags = 0b110101

Upvotes: 2

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

Reputation: 799490

They're used for expressing a number using bits.

0b0010010101001

Upvotes: 2

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