Why are there no octal literals in C#?
Why didn't those who develop C# include octal literals beyond hexadecimal and binary literals? What would seem to be the reason for that decision?
c#
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
add a comment |
Why didn't those who develop C# include octal literals beyond hexadecimal and binary literals? What would seem to be the reason for that decision?
c#
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
1
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,int x = 010;is not the same asint x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.
– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25
add a comment |
Why didn't those who develop C# include octal literals beyond hexadecimal and binary literals? What would seem to be the reason for that decision?
c#
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
Why didn't those who develop C# include octal literals beyond hexadecimal and binary literals? What would seem to be the reason for that decision?
c#
c#
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
edited Nov 28 '18 at 18:41
Stephen Kennedy
7,329135068
7,329135068
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
asked Nov 24 '18 at 13:08
Марк ПавловичМарк Павлович
717
717
1
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,int x = 010;is not the same asint x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.
– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25
add a comment |
1
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,int x = 010;is not the same asint x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.
– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25
1
1
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,
int x = 010; is not the same as int x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,
int x = 010; is not the same as int x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25
add a comment |
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
Octal encoding is a relic from computing in the late 1950s and 60s. Back then it was quite useful, companies built machines with a 6-bit byte, commonly packed in an 18-bit or 36-bit word. 6-bits was enough for everybody, teletypes and printers did not yet have lowercase letters and English was the dominant language.
Octal is nice for such 6-bit bytes, takes 2 digits and all bits are used.
That did peter out, inevitably, the IBM-360 was very influential and it had an 8-bit byte. The PDP-11 of 1970 was important, an affordable 16-bit machine with an 8-bit byte. Around 1975 the olden architectures acquired dinosaur status and programmers started heavily favoring hex. Octal is clumsy to encode 8 bit bytes, hex gave us the 2 digits back. Microprocessor kits of the era all used hex.
Octal did last a lot longer than it should have. DEC manuals always used octal notation, even for the 8-bitters. The C language brought it into the curly-brace languages, narrowly, it started life on GE-635 and PDP-8, 6-bit machines. Narrowly, it didn't become real C until the PDP-11, but the seed was planted. With a way to specify octal values that was far too easy, a leading 0 on the literal.
Producing countless bugs and extremely confused programmers. The C# team thoroughly removed such common bug generators from their curly-brace language. They did a terrific job.
add a comment |
A lot of people use 0 as prefix for visual alignments, having octal literals is commonly seen as footgun in programming languages.
var x = 11;
var y = 011;
This can happen by accident while hex and binary literals require a special alphanumeric prefix 0x or 0b. Modern languages try to reduce these kinds of footguns.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
add a comment |
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2 Answers
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active
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2 Answers
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active
oldest
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active
oldest
votes
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oldest
votes
Octal encoding is a relic from computing in the late 1950s and 60s. Back then it was quite useful, companies built machines with a 6-bit byte, commonly packed in an 18-bit or 36-bit word. 6-bits was enough for everybody, teletypes and printers did not yet have lowercase letters and English was the dominant language.
Octal is nice for such 6-bit bytes, takes 2 digits and all bits are used.
That did peter out, inevitably, the IBM-360 was very influential and it had an 8-bit byte. The PDP-11 of 1970 was important, an affordable 16-bit machine with an 8-bit byte. Around 1975 the olden architectures acquired dinosaur status and programmers started heavily favoring hex. Octal is clumsy to encode 8 bit bytes, hex gave us the 2 digits back. Microprocessor kits of the era all used hex.
Octal did last a lot longer than it should have. DEC manuals always used octal notation, even for the 8-bitters. The C language brought it into the curly-brace languages, narrowly, it started life on GE-635 and PDP-8, 6-bit machines. Narrowly, it didn't become real C until the PDP-11, but the seed was planted. With a way to specify octal values that was far too easy, a leading 0 on the literal.
Producing countless bugs and extremely confused programmers. The C# team thoroughly removed such common bug generators from their curly-brace language. They did a terrific job.
add a comment |
Octal encoding is a relic from computing in the late 1950s and 60s. Back then it was quite useful, companies built machines with a 6-bit byte, commonly packed in an 18-bit or 36-bit word. 6-bits was enough for everybody, teletypes and printers did not yet have lowercase letters and English was the dominant language.
Octal is nice for such 6-bit bytes, takes 2 digits and all bits are used.
That did peter out, inevitably, the IBM-360 was very influential and it had an 8-bit byte. The PDP-11 of 1970 was important, an affordable 16-bit machine with an 8-bit byte. Around 1975 the olden architectures acquired dinosaur status and programmers started heavily favoring hex. Octal is clumsy to encode 8 bit bytes, hex gave us the 2 digits back. Microprocessor kits of the era all used hex.
Octal did last a lot longer than it should have. DEC manuals always used octal notation, even for the 8-bitters. The C language brought it into the curly-brace languages, narrowly, it started life on GE-635 and PDP-8, 6-bit machines. Narrowly, it didn't become real C until the PDP-11, but the seed was planted. With a way to specify octal values that was far too easy, a leading 0 on the literal.
Producing countless bugs and extremely confused programmers. The C# team thoroughly removed such common bug generators from their curly-brace language. They did a terrific job.
add a comment |
Octal encoding is a relic from computing in the late 1950s and 60s. Back then it was quite useful, companies built machines with a 6-bit byte, commonly packed in an 18-bit or 36-bit word. 6-bits was enough for everybody, teletypes and printers did not yet have lowercase letters and English was the dominant language.
Octal is nice for such 6-bit bytes, takes 2 digits and all bits are used.
That did peter out, inevitably, the IBM-360 was very influential and it had an 8-bit byte. The PDP-11 of 1970 was important, an affordable 16-bit machine with an 8-bit byte. Around 1975 the olden architectures acquired dinosaur status and programmers started heavily favoring hex. Octal is clumsy to encode 8 bit bytes, hex gave us the 2 digits back. Microprocessor kits of the era all used hex.
Octal did last a lot longer than it should have. DEC manuals always used octal notation, even for the 8-bitters. The C language brought it into the curly-brace languages, narrowly, it started life on GE-635 and PDP-8, 6-bit machines. Narrowly, it didn't become real C until the PDP-11, but the seed was planted. With a way to specify octal values that was far too easy, a leading 0 on the literal.
Producing countless bugs and extremely confused programmers. The C# team thoroughly removed such common bug generators from their curly-brace language. They did a terrific job.
Octal encoding is a relic from computing in the late 1950s and 60s. Back then it was quite useful, companies built machines with a 6-bit byte, commonly packed in an 18-bit or 36-bit word. 6-bits was enough for everybody, teletypes and printers did not yet have lowercase letters and English was the dominant language.
Octal is nice for such 6-bit bytes, takes 2 digits and all bits are used.
That did peter out, inevitably, the IBM-360 was very influential and it had an 8-bit byte. The PDP-11 of 1970 was important, an affordable 16-bit machine with an 8-bit byte. Around 1975 the olden architectures acquired dinosaur status and programmers started heavily favoring hex. Octal is clumsy to encode 8 bit bytes, hex gave us the 2 digits back. Microprocessor kits of the era all used hex.
Octal did last a lot longer than it should have. DEC manuals always used octal notation, even for the 8-bitters. The C language brought it into the curly-brace languages, narrowly, it started life on GE-635 and PDP-8, 6-bit machines. Narrowly, it didn't become real C until the PDP-11, but the seed was planted. With a way to specify octal values that was far too easy, a leading 0 on the literal.
Producing countless bugs and extremely confused programmers. The C# team thoroughly removed such common bug generators from their curly-brace language. They did a terrific job.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 15:18
community wiki
Hans Passant
add a comment |
add a comment |
A lot of people use 0 as prefix for visual alignments, having octal literals is commonly seen as footgun in programming languages.
var x = 11;
var y = 011;
This can happen by accident while hex and binary literals require a special alphanumeric prefix 0x or 0b. Modern languages try to reduce these kinds of footguns.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
add a comment |
A lot of people use 0 as prefix for visual alignments, having octal literals is commonly seen as footgun in programming languages.
var x = 11;
var y = 011;
This can happen by accident while hex and binary literals require a special alphanumeric prefix 0x or 0b. Modern languages try to reduce these kinds of footguns.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
add a comment |
A lot of people use 0 as prefix for visual alignments, having octal literals is commonly seen as footgun in programming languages.
var x = 11;
var y = 011;
This can happen by accident while hex and binary literals require a special alphanumeric prefix 0x or 0b. Modern languages try to reduce these kinds of footguns.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
A lot of people use 0 as prefix for visual alignments, having octal literals is commonly seen as footgun in programming languages.
var x = 11;
var y = 011;
This can happen by accident while hex and binary literals require a special alphanumeric prefix 0x or 0b. Modern languages try to reduce these kinds of footguns.
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
answered Nov 24 '18 at 13:15
MinnMinn
782216
782216
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
add a comment |
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
yeah but it still could be developed in a 0o way or something like that, and in your particular example one can use _ instead of 0, can't they?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:19
1
1
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
Its an uncommon use-case so they probably decided to just not include it at all.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:20
add a comment |
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1
I strongly suspect it's because they're rarely useful, but they can be extremely annoying. I've certainly always found it strange that in Java,
int x = 010;is not the same asint x = 10;. I wouldn't mind with an explicit specifier, but just making a leading zero significant is horrible IMO.– Jon Skeet
Nov 24 '18 at 13:14
@HansPassant its not about dominance, octal is still a very useful base for triplets. This can also be seen in chmod.
– Minn
Nov 24 '18 at 13:21
yeah but octal literals can also be displayed by 0o, wouldn't that be even more logical that just 0?
– Марк Павлович
Nov 24 '18 at 13:25