Re: Hex string literals (was Re: C23 thoughts and opinions)

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Mon, 17 Jun 2024 22:39:00 -0700
Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:
>

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
>

AFAIK nobody uses octal anymore.

>
There are circumstances where being able to write constants
in octal is useful.  It also would be nice to be able to
write constants in base 4 and base 32 (because 5 is half
of 10).  I don't have occasion to prefer octal very often
but I'm glad it's there for those times when I do.

>
Ada/VHDL permits any base from 2 to 16.  They didn't go as far up as
32.
I would imagine that reading base 32 number would take time to become
accustomed.
Besides, using I and O as digits is problematic because of visual
similarity to 1 an 0.  Using l is problematic both because of visual
similarity to 1 and because of clash with existing use as suffix.

It would be nice (in some circumstances) to be able to write
constants in base 32.  That doesn't mean I'm proposing that
such constants be written using the common 10-digits-22-letters
form of representation.  Realistically I think it's unlikely
that the C standard will ever add a base-32 form for integer
constants, and even if it did I wouldn't want to wait that
long before it could be used reliably.  So all I'm saying is
that base-32 constants are sometimes useful, even if they
aren't incorporated into standard C.