Dave, no offense was intended. Yes, I totally understood your meaning. The mis-use of the term hexadecimal to mean vaguely "some value, possibly not a printable character" is a personal bugaboo of mine. The IBM doc does it: talking about specifying a word as containing "a hexadecimal value" when what they mean is a binary value. Specifying a hexadecimal value would mean specifying (character) 000A when what you meant was a binary value equal to decimal 10.
Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Dave Clark Sent: Wednesday, June 7, 2023 11:17 AM To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Shower thought "IBM Mainframe Assembler List" <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote on 06/07/2023 02:02:58 PM: > No! Not a hexadecimal comparison. If it were, 11 would compare higher than > AA at least in an EBCDIC environment. You're too literal. I didn't say the comparison was on the hexadecimal *value*. What I mean by a hexadecimal comparison (and I've seen it used this way elsewhere) is that it is a bit-by-bit, left-to-right unsigned comparison. Proof that you understood that, but chose to object anyway, is that you *didn't* object to it being called a *character* comparison -- even though I explicitly said that first. After all, it is not truly a *character* comparison, either. It is a bit-by-bit, left-to-right unsigned comparison and I've seen that called both a character comparison and a hexadecimal comparison because it is shorter to say and it is generally understood correctly even if the actual wording is nonsensical. I'll not argue it further.
