What does '0xDEAD' mean in the following code?

Question

There is an enum structure,but I don't understand the meaning of '0xDEAD - 2' in this enum.

enum TerminatedTypes {
    _not_terminated = 0xDEAD - 2,
    _thread_exiting,                            
    _thread_terminated,                          
    _vm_exited                                   
};

From the code above,What kind of benefit can I get?

The code above is in 'hotspot/src/share/vm/runtime/thread.hpp' in openjdk8.

I am studying source code of jdk,please help me.

It's just a sentinel value selected because it's hex representation looks cool. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Sep 09 '14 at 02:23
That a hex literal... http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/datatypes.html — jdphenix, Sep 09 '14 at 02:23
It's an example of a [*magic number*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_%28programming%29). Another is `0xCAFEBABE`. — Elliott Frisch, Sep 09 '14 at 02:24
_thread_terminated means dead and _not_terminated is dead - 2. I guess it's a programmer's trick to match word dead to a hexdecimal number 0xDEAD. maybe more meaningful and readable! — lucky1928, Sep 09 '14 at 02:26

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 09 '14 at 02:27

It's a hex literal, being used as an eyecatcher (useful in debuggers) so that the _thread_terminated value will be 0xDEAD ("terminated thread" equals "dead").

There's a host of hex literals people use for things like that, such as DEADBEEF from the Jargon file, and so on.

What does '0xDEAD' mean in the following code?

1 Answers1

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