Hexspeak, like Leetspeak, is a novelty form of variant English language spelling. Hexspeak predates the modern Leetspeak by many years (and may be one of its precursors), but it was invented for an entirely different purpose; the two ways of spelling are based on similar principles.

Hexspeak was created by programmers who wanted a unique identifier with which to mark memory and/or data. Since they used Hexadecimal, which uses the digits 0123456789ABCDEF, it was possible to create small words.

Hexspeak is mostly either 16 or 32 bits when it is used for magic number (programming)s. Examples include deadbeef, cafebabe, decafbad, baadfeed, baadf00d, c0edbabe, c001d00d, and f001. Note the use of the digits 1 and 0 to represent the letters L and O . In fact, the Java programming language uses cafebabe as the magic number (programming) identifying Java bytecode class files.

One could also use the prefixes and suffixes that are sometimes used to denote that it is a hexadecimal number. For example, old syntax hexadecimal numbers that begin with a letter (such as B in Bitch ) have to start with a zero to distinguish them from variables. Bitch would then be 0 B17Ch .

Also, it is possible to use the Pascal programming language notation for hexadecimal numbers for words starting with S. For example: $EA7 ( Seat ).

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