>Let's not spend time arguing definitions. An integer is a whole number, period. In VFP an integer has a minimum value and a maximum, but that's VFP's own definiotin, or limitation if you want. An integer is by us humans counted in "groups of 10", usually called decimal numbers. A hex value is also a whole number, but counted in "groups og 16", or hexadecimal meaning 16 (hex=6, deci=10). "Group of 10" is not technically the same as "group of 16", but that's really not important. I have a university degree in mathematics, so I know very well what I am talking about.
Same here.
> However, it is more than 30 years since I graduated,
Likewise... 28 years ago.
>so I don't remember all the different technincal definitions in detail anymore. But I remember the basic, and an integer value is NOT the same as a hex value. But all programming languages I know, has a transparent two-way conversion, meaning that they can handle both integer values and hex values easily.
My argument is that decimal whole numbers and hex numbers are just different representations of the same integers. The difference may be in the sign only, i.e. a hex value above 0x7fffffff may be taken as a negative or as a positive number, depending on whether it represents a signed or unsigned integer. But at the machine level, they are the same four bytes (assuming 32-bit integer arithmetic here).
The conversion is done by the compiler, in practically any language I can remember - i.e. a string in the source code containing only digits is translated into an integer (assuming it's within the integer range) using a base 10 algorithm, and a hex string is translated into an integer using a base 16 algorithm. So it's a conversion from source code and the machine readable integer, not any sort of conversion between different kinds of numbers.
>NB! I also don't have the ability to explain very well what I mean in english, so please be forgiving.
Same here - English is my 2nd language (in order of appearance) and I can pretty well recognize when the co-speaker uses a word in a different meaning. Don't think it's the case here.
