The Art of Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

2.5 A Note About Numbers vs. Representation

Many people confuse numbers and their representation. A common question beginning assembly language students ask is, "I have a binary number in the EAX register; how do I convert that to a hexadecimal number in the EAX register?" The answer is, " You don't." Although a strong argument could be made that numbers in memory or in registers are represented in binary, it's best to view values in memory or in a register as abstract numeric quantities. Strings of symbols like 128, $80, or %1000_0000 are not different numbers; they are simply different representations for the same abstract quantity that we refer to as "one hundred twenty-eight." Inside the computer, a number is a number regardless of representation; ...