[Python-3000] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Octal (original) (raw)

Stephen Hansen apt.shansen at gmail.com
Thu Mar 15 20:48:22 CET 2007

On 3/15/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

I'm neutral about the choice between 0o, 0c or 0t.

Interested Lurker Opinion: Can it be a "small" character? 0x1 leaps out for me because of the fact that numbers are all "tall" and the x is short-- so having that difference in height makes it very clear this is not a normal base 10 number when I'm scanning text. 0o755 does the same, as does 0c755. Heck, even 0b10100 looks fine even though the 'b' has a stalk, since its bottom-heavy with the stalk off to the side.

However, a 't' is a tall and relatively streamlined character... 0t755 looks all jumbled together and doesn't provide as clear a visual indicator that something abnormal is going on here. I periodically have to use octal numbers, and so far am only using them with the int() function because I don't find 0755 as readily expressive of "Hi! I'm Octal!" as I'd like. 0t755 wouldn't be much of an improvement; but anything else short would be, from 0o755 to 0c755 to ... 0a755 .. or whatever. :)

--Stephen, who goes back to lurking interestedly. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/attachments/20070315/55fbee23/attachment.html

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