Is the world coming to an end?

[Lutger Blijdestijn]

spir wrote:

> On 04/03/2011 02:52 AM, bearophile wrote:
>> Michel Fortin:
>>
>>> The new syntax is certainly usable, it's just inelegant and hackish.
>>> Its your language, it's your choice, and I'll admit it won't affect me
>>> much.
>>
>> My suggestions for Walter are:
>> - To turn 01 .. 07 too into errors;
>> - to deprecate the octal! Phobos template.
>> - To introduce the 0o leading that works from 0o0 to the uint.max;
>> - To change the new error message, so it suggests to use 0o.
>> - To ask opinions to the community here next time before changing things
>> in D2/D3 :-)
> 
> I'm very surprised of this move -- aside the concrete details. What I
> point out here is how far sentiments about what is "obvious" or "correct"
> can be, for a given issue, that most of us considered wrong for the same
> reason.
> 
> When I introduced the topic of octal notation 0nnn beeing bad, I was 100%
> sure that (if a move was ever made) either octals would be thrown out of D
> all together for beeing nearly useless, or the syntax would be fixed --
> the "obvious" "correct" solution if octals remain. While I new about
> octal!, this was so hackish and obviously wrong *for me*, that I did not
> even imagine one second it could become the "official" solution.
> I'm certainly not the only one.
> Questions of detail, sure, but we all know what the details hide ;-)
> 
> Denis

I don't understand why it is hackish if it's a pure library approach. (it is 
right?) I find it actually rather nice that D can do this. This is not a 
syntax change, octals are out of the language and the library now has an 
octal template. Where's the problem?