Do people use the octal number format in Clojure programming (zero on the left)?
(Have no idea what I'm talking about? You're not alone. Try this at your REPL: (* 2 010). If you expected to get 20, welcome to the world of octal numbers.) It's confusing to read in source code because it's rare, not very notable, and inherently ambiguous. It restricts the usefulness of the reader when parsing user input or data files with zero-padded numbers, which is not uncommon. And it's an unnerving esoteric bug waiting to happen if you're not versed in number parsing conventions, which goes against the (assumed) Clojure idea of keeping simple things simple and predictable. Even if people still use this format for file permissions or stuff like that, there is a much clearer alternative (8r) which is mentioned explicitly in the docs as opposed to the confusing convention which is supported but only vaguely implied (Search for "Numbers" in http://clojure.org/reader ). Why not retire this ill-conceived and outdated convention? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
