From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Octal vs. Hex war o' death
Date: 29 Nov 2000 16:22:31 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <9046k7$nrf$1@cesium.transmeta.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3A2590C8.34459BF9@echostar.com> <20001129181723.A2765@potty.housenet>
Followup to: <20001129181723.A2765@potty.housenet>
By author: Jeff Epler <jepler@inetnebr.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 04:27:04PM -0700, Ian S. Nelson wrote:
> > c) octals were invented for UNIX file permissions and not
> > programming
>
> You must be joking. Read much history of computing? Or
> alt.folklore.computers? Octal was very natural for 18- and 36-bit
> machines, after all.
>
Not to mention that it's still quite natural for a lot of machines.
If you ever look at raw x86 machine code, with it's 3-bit fields,
byteized octal actually makes it quite easy to read.
Octal probably predates hexadecimal, since it fit within the 0-9
digits most people used. Hex is really the natural choice for
modern power-of-two-width machines, though.
-hpa
--
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-11-30 0:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-11-29 23:27 Octal vs. Hex war o' death Ian S. Nelson
2000-11-30 0:17 ` Jeff Epler
2000-11-30 0:22 ` H. Peter Anvin [this message]
2000-11-30 0:39 ` PROBLEM: do_try_free_pages failed for python Bob Tanner
2000-11-30 16:06 ` Rik van Riel
2000-11-30 16:29 ` Andrea Arcangeli
2000-11-30 0:43 ` Octal vs. Hex war o' death Alexander Viro
2000-11-30 4:07 ` Igmar Palsenberg
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