Binary vs Text
Text is represented on computer hardware using a character encoding that maps binary codes to characters. For example, Utf-8 uses binary sequences of 8-bits, 16-bits, 24-bits and 32-bits to represent 128,237 characters from 135 modern and historical languages.Binary vs Decimal
Binary is a number system that uses two symbols: 0 and 1. Decimal is the regular number system that uses the symbols 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Decimal numbers can be represented in binary using a character set. Decimal numbers can also be represented as numerical datatypes defined by an operating system or runtime environment such as Java.Binary vs Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal is a numbering system that uses the 16 symbols 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F. A culture of using hexadecimal exists within computer science. For example, it is common for memory addresses to be based on hexadecimal. A standard mapping exists between binary and hexadecimal that is illustrated below. Humans tend to find it easier to work with hexadecimal than binary because it's shorter by a factor of four. As such, it is common for computers to display binary as hexadecimal.
Non-binary Computers
Non-binary computers are possible and an area of active research. Circuits based on binary are easy to implement as binary can be represented as an electrical current and lack of an electrical current corresponding to true and false or 1 and 0. As such, non-binary computers require a completely different technology. Given how advanced binary technologies have become, a non-binary technology would have a lot of catching up to do to be equally advanced.| Overview: Binary | ||
Type | ||
Definition | Data that is encoded as a series of 0s and 1s. | |
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