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# Why Does 0x appear in Hex value?

`0x` appears in a hexadecimal literal to distinguish it from other tokens(variable name or functon name). 

`ABCDE123` could mean either of these things. It cannot be distinguished easily. It contains valid digits to be an hexadecimal number and is also a valid token name. 

The creators of C/C++ decided to use a leading `0x`.

A leading 0 is not allowed as a valid token name in this laguage. So anything starting with 0 is sure to be a number. 

Only having 0 is not enough as it is reserved for signifying octal number. So `0123` is surely an octal number. 

`0x123` or `0xABDC` are surely hexadecimal litreals.