# 16s complement

#### Mazaag

Joined Oct 23, 2004
255
Hi guys,
just a question

in 2's complement, the MSB is the sign bit ,if its 0 then its +ve, if its 1 then its negative

my question is , If i have a number which is 16's complement , is there a sign bit ? and if there is , which one is it and hwo could i say if its +ve or -ve value

thanks

#### Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
18,074
Originally posted by Mazaag@May 2 2006, 09:21 PM
Hi guys,
just a question

in 2's complement, the MSB is the sign bit ,if its 0 then its +ve, if its 1 then its negative

my question is , If i have a number which is 16's complement , is there a sign bit ? and if there is , which one is it and hwo could i say if its +ve or -ve value
thanks
[post=16756]Quoted post[/post]​
No. There is no sign bit, just a rule or convention about which ranges represent positive or negative numbers. The usual convention is to say

MAX_POSITIVE + 1 = MAX_NEGATIVE

In Hexadecimal (base 16) we have the following

80..FF are negative and correspond to -128 to -1
00..7F are positive and correspond to 0 to 127

To complement

(3C)* = C4 and
C4 + 3C = 00 plus a carry