Do you remember DEADBEEF from your early programming days?

[jim mcnamara]

from programming long ago?

 

[Borg]

Yes.

 

[gmax137]

no.

 

[Mark44]

Sure. The hex number 0xDEADBEEF happens to be the decimal number 3735928559, although that's of no real consequence.

 

[Borg]

Maybe it's his phone number.

 

[berkeman]

I remember that we used it as a default setting a few years ago (I don't remember the exact application), but it was pointed out that it might not sit well with our vegetarian customers (which we never thought of), so we changed it. Not so much to be PC, but to avoid potential conflicts. (And that was before I married a vegetarian...)

 

[Klystron]

I tried to relate a few hexadecimal jokes before but they fell flat. Either jokes made with words formed from the first six letters of the alphabet (combined with digits 0..9 ?) are not funny or people do not program hex any more. Cafe Dead, Feed Beef, Deaf Fade, Aced Deed.
Ho-Hum

 

[Vanadium 50]

I tried to relate a few hexadecimal jokes before but they fell flat.

I agree. Jokes are better in other bases:
Why do programmers confuse Christmas with Halloween?
Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec

 

[Borek]

Yep.

 

[DavidSnider]

Yep.

 _   _
((___))
[ x x ]
 \   /
 (' ')
  (U)

 

[diogenesNY]

Wow. This takes me back to the days when 32767 was the highest number in the universe!

I seem to have some recollection that deadbeef was null data on some systems... i.e. if you read some section of a program or data space that contained null data (as opposed to just zeros or random noise), than you would see deadbeef, in hex... but this is just a vague wisp of unrefreshed memory.

diogenesNY

 

[Nugatory]

from programming long ago?

Sure, and there are many more as well. We used these values when we needed something that would stand out in a hex dump (either scanning visually or searching), or a recognizable sentinel value

A few others: FEEDBEEF, FEEDFACE, DEAFBEEF, ...

 

[jim mcnamara]

Solaris' malloc uses it to mark free memory. FWIW.

 

[DrClaude]

Sure, and there are many more as well.

I had to look up DEADBEEF when I first stumbled on this thread and I found the following interesting list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Magic_debug_values