Now I have another question! What about the result. Will that be in hex form or a decimal representation of the hex value.

for example lets say do the following

counter = counter + $01 will the result in counter variable now have the HEX representation. or will it have the decimal representation.

Also lets say I do the following

PORTB = 128 'which is 1000000 in binary.
this means that PORTB.7= 1 while the rest of the pins in portB = 0

if I am not mistaken this is the same thing as saying PORTB = $80.

So basically it does not matter if you are incrementing in HEX form or Decimal form because the output will eventually be converted back to binary form.