I find myself often using hex-strings of assembly instructions in C++ programs, for example, "\xeb\x1f\x5e\x89\x76\x08\x31\xc0\x88\x46\x07\x89\x46\x0c\xb0\x0b" (snippet from http://www.phrack.org/phrack/49/P49-14, as a canonical example of shellcode).
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