Re: The "leading zero means octal" thing...

In comp.unix.shell, Kenny McCormack <gazelle@shell.xmission.com> wrote:

First of all, yes, I know this is all standardized and it is based on
legacy C conventions and it can't be changed and so on and so forth.
 
But if not a bug, it is certainly a misfeature.

I can see it as a legacy feature that has grown so old as to be a
misfeature. Other than bit patterns for chmod, I never see octal used
for modern stuff.

the VIM editor.

Vim is highly configurable. See ":help nrformats" for supported formats.
Not clearly documented in the version I have, but implied, is setting
it to a blank string to only recognize ordinary decimal numbers.

:set nrformats=

If you have no vimrc, the defaults.vim shipped with the editor (vim 8)
sets that to recognize decimal, binary ("0b10101"), and hexadecimal
("0xcafe").  But the compiled in default also includes the dreaded
octal.

You might want to peruse the defaults.vim file for modern recommended
defaults. Except for scrolloff and incsearch, I don't find them that
unpleasant. I think a lot of people like incsearch, and I like scrolloff
on occaison, but not regularly.

Start vim, then ":e $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim" to view the defaults file.

Elijah
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prefers vim acting mostly "compatible"