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To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Subject: Re: Octal vs. Hex war o' death
Date: 29 Nov 2000 16:22:31 -0800
Organization: Transmeta Corporation, Santa Clara CA
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Copyright: Copyright 2000 H. Peter Anvin - All Rights Reserved
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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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