Is the world coming to an end?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Russel Winder" <russel at russel.org.uk> wrote in message 
news:mailman.3055.1301814881.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 18:20 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 4/2/11 5:27 PM, ulrik.mikaelsson at gmail.com wrote:
>> > A D-newbie would probably be able to guess 0o for octal, but hardly
>> > octal!. octal! breaks the rule of least surprise.
>>
>> I fail to infer how using the word "octal" for an octal literal is
>> surprising at all.
>
>The problem is not that it is a poor solution in isolation, it is the
>conflict between 0b... and 0x.. versus octal!...  Why is octal being
>discriminated against compared to binary and hexadecimal?
>

To be perfectly blunt, it's because octal...well, sucks. It's useless 
compared to binary and hex and just isn't really deserving of a special 
notation anyway. Even more so since the rare uses of it are possible in D 
without it being part of the language. Binary and hex, OTOH, are useful (I 
use hex very frequently. And I would get a lot of use out of binary if I 
actually had time to do low-level work like I used to).

That said, I woudn't have a problem with 0o... being used instead (Although 
I'd actually prefer 0c...). But I have a hard time understanding why people 
are making such a big deal out of something that practically no one ever 
uses anyway. Consistency is nice, sure, but when it's such a trival 
corner-case as octal: Why even care? This isn't the color of the bikeshed, 
this is the *shade* of color on the underside of the trim on a window that's 
one foot off the ground and completely blocked by a big tree.