Is the world coming to an end?

[Russel Winder]

On Sun, 2011-04-03 at 04:05 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[ . . . ]
> >The same goes for 0b... 0x... so why aren't they being removed in favour
> >of library based solution?
> 
> Because unlike the octal syntax, those are neither error-prone nor 
> barely-useful. I agree that consistency is good, but I think it's far 
> outweighed in this case by those other concerns.

Your argument rests on the octal representation being like 0777, a
notation that everyone has already agreed needs removing.  The
introduction of 0o777 for octal increases consistency without
introducing error proneness.  This is just win--win.

There is no consistent language design argument that supports have 0b...
and 0x... but not 0o... -- requiring the use of octal! from the library
when hex! and binary! are not the standard forms.

In the end this is Walter's decision, I'd just prefer him not to get it
wrong.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
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