Hexadecimal Sign and Magnitude

[Mikeob1]

Hopefully someone on here knows the answer.

For one of my classes I have to do some problems involving hexadecimal numbers represented in sign and magnitude format. I'm familiar with using sign and magnitude representation for binary numbers where typically the left bit is designated as the sign bit and is either 0 for positive or 1 for negative. How is sign and magnitude implemented for hexadecimal numbers?

I've been looking on google and have yet to find an answer.

[joedirt00]

WTF are you talking about?

[Mikeob1]

Binary notation is used in computers. Instead of digits 0-9 like we are used to, it uses only 0 and 1. Instead of using + and - for positive and negative numbers it uses one place (think back to elementary school tens, hundreds, or thousands place) to be the positive or negative symbol. So if the first digit is 0 the number is positive and if the first digit is 1 the number is negative. That is how binary numbers are represented to be positive or negative using sign and magnitude notation (first number is the sign and the rest are the magnitude, or value). My question is asking how this is done using hexadecimal numbers where instead of 0-9 or 0,1 the base numbers are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F. Values 0 through 15.

</nerd talk>

[ontrider]

What is the question? How to convert hex to negative numbers?

[Mikeob1]

Yes. More specifically how to covert a sign and magnitude hexadecimal number to base 10, and how to add/subtract sign and magnitude hexadecimal numbers.

[Rhawn]

You can do the conversion to binary, do your math then convert back.

[Mikeob1]

Rhawn, that is what I finally ended up doing. I don't think they wanted us to assume the hex numbers were in sign and magnitude, just that the binary numbers, once converted, were in sign and magnitude.