[Python-3000] Octal (original) (raw)

Jim Jewett jimjjewett at gmail.com
Fri Mar 16 18:38:00 CET 2007

On 3/15/07, Patrick Maupin <pmaupin at gmail.com> wrote:

I have not seen any real requests for any bases other than 2, 8, 10, or 16.

What is the real need for 8?

The only use I've seen on the list is unix file permissions. Even if that weren't obscure enough to stick in a module, I would still rather see

chmod g+x

than something that requires a man page for translation.

FWIW, I have actually used octal literals (in C) for an old wire protocol. It did conform with the surrounding code, but ... that didn't make it readable, either to me or to the usual maintainers. This oddball code wasn't the only thing they had to maintain, and they were young enough (mostly born in the late 1960s) to sometimes forget the "leading 0 <==> octal" rule.

-jJ

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