[Python-Dev] Octal literals (original) (raw)

Stefan Rank stefan.rank at ofai.at
Fri Feb 3 09:38:06 CET 2006

on 03.02.2006 00:16 Delaney, Timothy (Tim) said the following:

Andrew Koenig wrote:

I definately agree with the 0c664 octal literal. Seems rather more intuitive. I still prefer 8r664. The more I look at this, the worse it gets. Something beginning with zero (like 0xFF, 0c664) immediately stands out as "unusual". Something beginning with any other digit doesn't.

Let me throw something into the arena :-)

I know there should only be one way to do it, but what about requiring a leading 0 for any 'special' number format, and then allow::

0x1AFFE

and::

016r1AFFE

02r010001000101001

08r1234567

and maybe have 0b be a synonym of 02r, and some other nice character (o/c) for octals.

For backwards compatibility you could even allow classic octal literals, though I think it would be better to have a Syntax Error for any literal starting with 0 but missing a radix code.

cheers

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