Is the world coming to an end?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Lutger Blijdestijn" <lutger.blijdestijn at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:in9t6a$21jb$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> 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?
>

Apperently, people want to get a warm fuzzy feeling from the existence of 
features they'll never use.

Seriously, we don't have an 0t... for trinary. We don't have an 0q... for 
base-4 (quadrary?). We don't have any such syntax for any base other than 2, 
10, and 16 (and previously 8). And how many people are bitching about those 
omissions? Nobody. But those omissions are *EVERY BIT* as inconsistent with 
decimal/hex/binary syntax as omitting octal is.

But noooo, apperently we *need* 0o... for octal just simply for the sake of 
*it* existing, but not for any other base. So where the fuck is the 
consistency in the self-proclaimed "consistency" argument? And don't tell me 
"octal is more useful than trinary" because then you're implicitly admitting 
that the consistency argument is a load of crap, and you're jumping ship to 
the "usefulness" argument...which octal *still* looses.