On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote:
> On Thursday 10 May 2018 20:55:58 bartc wrote: > > > On 11/05/2018 01:25, Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > > > Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>: > > >> Octal makes a lot of sense in the right contexts. > > > > > > I think octal is a historical relic from a time when people weren't > > > yet comfortable with hexadecimal. > > > > It's a relic from when machines had word sizes that were multiples of > > three bits, or were divided up on 3-bit boundaries. > > > > -- > > bartc > > Maybe so, but isn't it time to fix that? The first "computer" I ever got > to take home and learn how it worked, was a Quest Super Elf, had an RCA > 1802 processor on it. This was winter of 77-78, and it had a monitor > that spoke hexidecimal. I spent that winter exploring it before I set > out to write the program it would run until June 30th 2008 when we > switched from Never Twice Same Color to digital. > > So other than the *nix chmod, and some similar stuff in > os9/nitros9/amigados, I have never had to deal with octal. I'm sure the > security people would be pleased if another bit could be expanded into > the permissions that chmod controls, so lets deprecate octal and be done > with it. Computers haven't read a single 8 bit byte in years, some > reading 128 or 256 bits in a single read cycle today. Bring the language > into the 21st century. > > Its a dirty job, but somebody will have to do it eventually, why not now? > I agree with my freind Gene! And, if it is really necessary to retain octal, why not preface it with anything BUT a "0". I've been hit by this a few times in the past. I used lots of hex over the years, but don't recall ever using octal ... except in frustrating moments when I needed to change permission bits. -- **** Listen to my FREE CD at http://www.mellowood.ca/music/cedars **** Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA ** EMAIL: b...@mellowood.ca WWW: http://www.mellowood.ca -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
