On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 09:20 UTC, Nick Hilliard wrote:
On 14/04/2010 08:06, Srinivas Chendi <sunny@apnic.net> wrote to SANOG:
014/8 223/8
Sunny,
Please be careful about how you write this. "014" is formally an octal representation, and what you've written there actually means that APNIC has received 12/8 (= octal 014).
Nick
Nick, My eyebrow raised at the leading zero as well, but I'd call it ambiguous. 0x14 is unambiguously decimal 20, but 014 is only unambiguous in a context that defines leading zero as implying octal. For a C program relying on the runtime to convert text to numeric representation, it depends. sscanf("%d", &myint) will convert 014 to decimal 14, "%i" gets decimal 12. I personally hunt down and kill %i and other octal-assuming code when I see it, except where octal is conventional. To my eyes, 0xFF (or FF) screams "all bits lit" while 0377 (or 377) only hesitantly clears its throat. Moreover, I assume computers will be used by people who have never had reason to believe a leading zero implies base 8, and I find no joy in forcing them to learn that quirk of computing history. Take care, Dave Hart