Is the world coming to an end?

[Iain Buclaw]

== Quote from Steven Schveighoffer (schveiguy at yahoo.com)'s article
> On Sun, 03 Apr 2011 07:48:24 -0400, spir <denis.spir at gmail.com> 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 ;-)
> Octal literals *are* out of the language, it's no longer supported.
> Because of historical reasons, the syntax is disallowed (otherwise, ported
> code from C that used octal notation would be horrifically broken).
> The octal template is a separate addition to allow octal in the very few
> places it is needed.
> IIRC, you never complained that octal notation is horrible because you
> wanted to *use* octal, it's because you *accidentally* used it.  This
> change fixes your problem, you can't accidentally use the octal literal
> notation.  So why the complaints?
> -Steve

Both ways compile down to the same instruction.

auto a = 0777;          // movl   $0x1ff,-0x4(%ebp)
auto b = octal!777;     // movl   $0x1ff,-0x8(%ebp)


The only real difference is the latter method:
- Instantiates and emits a (possibly unwanted) template, so those who still
believe in bloat are kicking themselves.
- Adds a seemingly useless library dependency on something the compiler *can* do
automatically.
- Takes 100% longer to compile from source to object file (in comparison to the
time it takes to output the former).

Boo hoo. :)