Home Original page

[Python-Dev] Octal literals

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
More information about the Python-Dev mailing list