Perhaps unfortunately, the term "binary" has acquired several related but different meanings such that terms like "binary number" and phrases like "conver to binary" can be quite ambiguous.

Since "binary" is often used to refer to the internal or "raw" format of data, I will usually use "base-2" when talking about representing a numeric value in a string using only the characters '1' and '0'.

There is also the term "numeral" which is probably a more precise term to use instead of "number" when talking about repesentations in different bases. A numeral is a representation of a number. IMHO, "hexadecimal number" is just sloppy vernacular for "hexadecimal numeral", and such is just fine in most cases.

When making a distinction between a number's value and its representation, the term "numeral" might be handy except that I expect many don't know the term well and probably think it is just a synonym for "number".

So one could talk about getting "the base-2 numeral for a numeric value" and be very precise and unambiguous, and probably not be as well understood. I'm not trying to draw some meaningful conclusion from this observation; I just find it interesting.

- tye        

In reply to Re^2: binary numbers ("binary") by tye
in thread binary numbers by mAineAc

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.