On 4/3/11 3:46 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
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.
It wins consistency with two other hardwired conventions for
representing numbers. It is a total loss in helping anything but octal
constants.
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.
0x is too widespread and too often used in C and C++ to gratuitously
eliminate it. It does not have significant disadvantages. Besides it is
used fairly often. I agree that 0b could and should be deprecated.
In the end this is Walter's decision, I'd just prefer him not to get it
wrong.
That is appreciated.
Andrei
