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The term magic number or magic constant refers to the anti-pattern of using numbers directly in source code. This has been referred to as breaking one of the oldest rules of programming, dating back to the COBOL , FORTRAN and PL/1 manuals of the 1960s. [ 1 ]
Such signatures are also known as magic numbers or magic bytes. Many file formats are not intended to be read as text. If such a file is accidentally viewed as a text file, its contents will be unintelligible. However, some file signatures can be recognizable when interpreted as text.
Magic number (programming) Time formatting and storage bugs, for problems that can be caused by magics; Sentinel value (aka flag value, trip value, rogue value, signal value, dummy data) Canary value, special value to detect buffer overflows; Video games cheat codes which have the same origin; XYZZY (command)
("decaf bad") is often found in coding as an easily recognized magic number when hex dumping memory. 0xDEFEC8ED: 3741239533 ("defecated") is the magic number for OpenSolaris core dumps. [26] 0xD0D0CACA: 3503344330 ("doo-doo caca") is the uninitialized value of GPIO values on the Nvidia Tegra X1. [citation needed] 0xE011CFD0: 3759263696
The shebang is actually a human-readable instance of a magic number in the executable file, the magic byte string being 0x23 0x21, the two-character encoding in ASCII of #!. This magic number is detected by the "exec" family of functions, which determine whether a file is a script or an executable binary. The presence of the shebang will result ...
In the context of computer programming, magic is an informal term for abstraction; it is used to describe code that handles complex tasks while hiding that complexity to present a simple interface. The term is somewhat tongue-in-cheek , and often carries bad connotations, implying that the true behavior of the code is not immediately apparent.
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These limits are not really magic numbers, they are fundamental. The article Integer (computer science), to which redirects, has them, but only in decimal (and in a sense they are "magic" in decimal as seemingly arbitrary, whereas in hex they are plainly not). I am tempted to add the hex into the Integer article and delete this section: there ...