In computer programming, the term magic number has multiple meanings. It could refer to one or more of the following:
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The format indicator type of magic number was initially found in early Seventh Edition source code of the Unix operating system and, although it has lost its original meaning, the term magic number has become part of computer industry lexicon.
When Unix was ported to one of the first DEC PDP-11/20s it did not have memory protection and, therefore, early versions of Unix used the relocatable memory reference model.[1] Thus, pre-Sixth Edition Unix versions read an executable file into memory and jumped to the first low memory address of the program, relative address zero. With the development of paged versions of Unix, a header was created to describe the executable image components. Also, a branch instruction was inserted as the first word of the header to skip the header and start the program. In this way a program could be run in the older relocatable memory reference (regular) mode or in paged mode. As more executable formats were developed, new constants were added by incrementing the branch offset.[2]
In the Sixth Edition source code of the Unix program loader, the exec() function read the executable (binary) image from the file system. The first 8 bytes of the file was a header containing the sizes of the program (text) and initialized (global) data areas. Also, the first 16-bit word of the header was compared to two constants to determine if the executable image contained relocatable memory references (normal), the newly implemented paged read-only executable image, or the separated instruction and data paged image.[3] There was no mention of the dual role of the header constant, but the high order byte of the constant was, in fact, the operation code for the PDP-11 branch instruction (octal 000407 or hex 0107). Adding seven to the program counter showed that if this constant was executed, it would branch the Unix exec() service over the executable image eight byte header and start the program.
Since the Sixth and Seventh Editions of Unix employed paging code, the dual role of the header constant was hidden. That is, the exec() service read the executable file header (meta) data into a kernel space buffer, but read the executable image into user space, thereby not using the constant's branching feature. Magic number creation was implemented in the Unix linker and loader and magic number branching was probably still used in the suite of stand-alone diagnostic programs that came with the Sixth and Seventh Editions. Thus, the header constant did provide an illusion and met the criteria for magic.
In Version Seven Unix, the header constant was not tested directly, but assigned to a variable labeled ux_mag[4] and subsequently referred to as the magic number. Given that there were approximately 10,000 lines of code and many constants employed in these early Unix versions, this indeed was a curious name for a constant, almost as curious as the [1] comment used in the context switching section of the Version Six program manager. Probably because of its uniqueness, the term magic number came to mean executable format type, then expanded to mean file system type, and expanded again to mean any strongly typed file.
Magic numbers are common in programs across many operating systems. Magic numbers implement strongly typed data and are a form of in-band signaling to the controlling program that reads the data type(s) at program run-time. Many files have such constants that identify the contained data. Detecting such constants in files is a simple and effective way of distinguishing between many file formats and can yield further run-time information.
Some examples:
CAFEBABE. When compressed with Pack200 the bytes are changed to CAFED00D.47 49 46 38 39 61) or "GIF87a" (47 49 46 38 37 61)FF D8 and end with FF D9. JPEG/JFIF files contain the ASCII code for "JFIF" (4A 46 49 46) as a null terminated string. JPEG/Exif files contain the ASCII code for "Exif" (45 78 69 66) also as a null terminated string, followed by more metadata about the file.\211 P N G \r \n \032 \n (89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A). That signature contains various newline characters to permit detecting unwarranted automated newline conversions, such as transferring the file using FTP with the ASCII transfer mode instead of the binary mode.[5]4D 54 68 64) followed by more metadata.23 21) followed by the path to an interpreter.25 21).25 50 44 46).4D 5A), the initials of the designer of the file format, Mark Zbikowski. The definition allows "ZM" (5A 4D) as well, but this is quite uncommon.19 54 01 19 or 01 19 54 depending on version; both represent the birthday of the author, Marshall Kirk McKusick.AA 55 as its last two bytes.4A 6F 79 21) as a prefix.II or MM followed by 42 as a two-byte integer in little or big endian byte ordering. II is for Intel, which uses little endian byte ordering, so the magic number is 49 49 2A 00. MM is for Motorola, which uses big endian byte ordering, so the magic number is 4D 4D 00 2A.FE FF for big endian and FF FE for little endian). UTF-8 text files often start with the UTF-8 encoding of the same character, EF BB BF.BC (0x42, 0x43)IWAD or PWAD (for Doom), WAD2 (for Quake) and WAD3 (for Half-Life).D0 CF 11 E0, which is visually suggestive of the word "DOCFILE0".50 4B), the initials of Phil Katz, author of DOS compression utility PKZIP.The Unix utility program file can read and interpret magic numbers from files, and indeed, the file which is used to parse the information is called magic. The Windows utility TrID has a similar purpose.
2A.52 46 42, for "Remote Frame Buffer") followed by the client's protocol version number.FF 53 4D 42', or "\xFFSMB" at the start of the SMB request.05 at the start of the request (representing Microsoft DCE/RPC Version 5), followed immediately by a 00 or 01 for the minor version. In UDP-based MSRPC requests the first byte is always 04.4D 45 4F 57). Debugging extensions (used for DCOM channel hooking) are prefaced with the byte sequence "MARB" (4D 41 52 42).19 representing the header length, followed immediately by the phrase "BitTorrent protocol" at byte position 1.E3 represents an eDonkey client, C5 represents eMule, and D4 represents compressed eMule.80 and an SSLv3 server response to a client hello begins with 16 (though this may vary).0x63 0x82 0x53 0x63' at the start of the options section of the packet. This value is included in all DHCP packet types.The term magic number or magic constant also refers to the programming practice 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.[6] The use of unnamed magic numbers in code obscures the developers' intent in choosing that number,[7] increases opportunities for subtle errors (e.g. is every digit correct in 3.14159265358979323846 and is this equal to 3.14159?) and makes it more difficult for the program to be adapted and extended in the future.[8] Replacing all significant magic numbers with named constants makes programs easier to read, understand and maintain.[9]
Names chosen should be meaningful in terms of the domain. It is easy to imagine nonsense like int EIGHT = 16 resulting when NUMBER_OF_BITS might have been a better choice of name in the first place.
The problems associated with magic 'numbers' described above are not limited to numerical types and the term is also applied to other data types where declaring a named constant would be more flexible and communicative.[6] Thus, declaring const string testUserName = "John" is better than several occurrences of the 'magic number' "John" in a test suite.
For example, if it is required to randomly shuffle the values in an array representing a standard pack of playing cards, this pseudocode will do the job:
for i from 1 to 52
j := i + randomInt(53 - i) - 1
a.swapEntries(i, j)
where a is an array object, the function randomInt(x) chooses a random integer between 1 to x, inclusive, and swapEntries(i, j) swaps the ith and jth entries in the array. In the preceding example, 52 is a magic number. It is considered better programming style to write the following:
constant int deckSize := 52
for i from 1 to deckSize
j := i + randomInt(deckSize + 1 - i) - 1
a.swapEntries(i, j)
This is preferable for several reasons:
deckSize variable in the second example would be a simple, one-line change.deckSize into a parameter of that procedure. The first example would require several changes, perhaps:
function shuffle (int deckSize)
for i from 1 to deckSize
j := i + randomInt(deckSize + 1 - i) - 1
a.swapEntries(i, j)
Disadvantages are:
In some contexts the use of unnamed numerical constants is generally accepted (and arguably "not magic"). While such acceptance is subjective, and often depends on individual coding habits, the following are common examples:
for (int i = 0; i < max; i = i + 1) (assuming ++i is not supported)isEven = (x % 2 == 0), where % is the modulo operatorcircumference = 2 * Math.PI * radius,[6] or for calculating the discriminant of a quadratic equation as d = b^2 − 4*a*cThe constants 1 and 0 are sometimes used to represent the boolean values True and False in programming languages without a boolean type such as older versions of C. Most modern programming languages provide a boolean or bool primitive type and so the use of 0 and 1 is ill-advised.
In C and C++, 0 is sometimes used to represent the null pointer. As with boolean values, the C standard library includes a macro definition NULL whose use is encouraged. Other languages provide a specific null or nil value and when this is the case no alternative should be used.
It is possible to create or alter Globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) so that they are memorable, but this is highly discouraged as it compromises their strength as near-unique identifiers.[10][11] The specifications for generating GUIDs and UUIDs are quite complex, which is what leads to them being pretty much guaranteed unique, if properly implemented. They should only be generated by a reputable software tool.
Java uses several GUIDs starting with CAFEEFAC.[12]
Magic debug values are specific values written to memory during allocation or deallocation, so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted, and to make it obvious when values taken from uninitialized memory are being used. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common. Numerically odd values may be preferred so that processors without byte addressing will fault when attempting to use them as pointers (which must fall at even addresses). Values should be chosen that are away from likely addresses (the program code, static data, heap data, or the stack). Similarly, they may be chosen so that they are not valid codes in the instruction set for the given architecture.
Since it is very unlikely, although possible, that a 32-bit integer would take this specific value, the appearance of such a number in a debugger or memory dump most likely indicates an error such as a buffer overflow or an uninitialized variable.
Famous and common examples include:
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
..FACADE |
Used by a number of RTOSes |
8BADF00D |
Used by Apple as the exception code in iPhone crash reports when an application has taken too long to launch or terminate. |
A5A5A5A5 |
Used in embedded development because the alternating bit pattern (10100101) creates an easily recognized pattern on oscilloscopes and logic analyzers. |
A5 |
Used in FreeBSD's PHK malloc(3) for debugging when /etc/malloc.conf is symlinked to "-J" to initialize all newly allocated memory as this value is not a NULL pointer or ASCII NUL character. |
ABABABAB |
Used by Microsoft's HeapAlloc() to mark "no man's land" guard bytes after allocated heap memory |
ABADBABE |
Used by Apple as the "Boot Zero Block" magic number |
ABADCAFE |
A startup to this value to initialize all free memory to catch errant pointers |
BAADF00D |
Used by Microsoft's LocalAlloc(LMEM_FIXED) to mark uninitialised allocated heap memory |
BADBADBADBAD |
Burroughs large systems "uninitialized" memory (48-bit words) |
BADC0FFEE0DDF00D |
Used on IBM RS/6000 64-bit systems to indicate uninitialized CPU registers |
BADCAB1E |
Error Code returned to the Microsoft eVC debugger when connection is severed to the debugger |
BADDCAFE |
On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks uninitialised kernel memory (KMEM_UNINITIALIZED_PATTERN) |
BBADBEEF |
Used in WebKit |
BEEFCACE |
Used by Microsoft .NET as a magic number in resource files |
C0DEDBAD |
A memory leak tracking tool which it will change the MMU tables so that all references to address zero |
CAFEBABE |
Used by both Universal Mach-O binaries and Java .class files |
CAFEFEED |
Used by Sun Microsystems' Solaris debugging kernel to mark kmemfree() memory |
CCCCCCCC |
Used by Microsoft's C++ debugging runtime library to mark uninitialised stack memory |
CDCDCDCD |
Used by Microsoft's C++ debugging runtime library to mark uninitialised heap memory |
CEFAEDFE |
Seen in Intel Mach-O binaries on Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X platform (see FEEDFACE) |
DDDDDDDD |
Used by MicroQuill's SmartHeap and Microsoft's C++ debugging heap to mark freed heap memory |
DEADBABE |
Used at the start of Silicon Graphics' IRIX arena files |
DEADBEEF |
Famously used on IBM systems such as the RS/6000, also used in the original Mac OS operating systems, OPENSTEP Enterprise, and the Commodore Amiga. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks freed kernel memory (KMEM_FREE_PATTERN) |
DEADDEAD |
A Microsoft Windows STOP Error code used when the user manually initiates the crash. |
DEADF00D |
Used by Mungwall on the Commodore Amiga to mark allocated but uninitialised memory [13] |
DEADFA11 |
Used by Apple as the exception code in iPhone crash reports when the user has force-quit the application. |
EBEBEBEB |
From MicroQuill's SmartHeap |
FADEDEAD |
Comes at the end to identify every AppleScript script |
FDFDFDFD |
Used by Microsoft's C++ debugging heap to mark "no man's land" guard bytes before and after allocated heap memory |
FEE1DEAD |
Used by Linux reboot() syscall |
FEEDFACE |
Seen in PowerPC Mach-O binaries on Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X platform. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, marks the red zone (KMEM_REDZONE_PATTERN) |
FEEEFEEE |
Used by Microsoft's HeapFree() to mark freed heap memory |
Note that most of these are each 32 bits long — the dword size of 32-bit architecture computers.
The prevalence of these values in Microsoft technology is no coincidence; they are discussed in detail in Steve Maguire's book Writing Solid Code from Microsoft Press. He gives a variety of criteria for these values, such as:
Since they were often used to mark areas of memory that were essentially empty, some of these terms came to be used in phrases meaning "gone, aborted, flushed from memory"; e.g. "Your program is DEADBEEF".
Pietr Brandehörst's ZUG programming language initialized memory to either 0000, DEAD or FFFF in development environment and to 0000 in the live environment, on the basis that uninitialised variables should be encouraged to misbehave under development to trap them, but encouraged to behave in a live environment to reduce errors.
