Why does the color picker in Photoshop CS6 allow eight characters instead of six?

Question

Why does the color picker in Photoshop CS6 allow eight characters instead of six? Further, is there a way to cap it at six characters like earlier versions of Photoshop?

Answer 1

Using the RGB color model, the two additional characters allow you to copy and paste extra characters such as the # or 0x prefix to hexadecimal color codes. As for the possibility of limiting the input length to six characters, perhaps someone else with access to the program could chime in.