From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
To: Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com>
Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: How switch from escaped octal character code to escaped HEX?
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:03:48 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwvpqsd48v4.fsf-monnier+inbox@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTin9ZyOMdqVb8jy6ooZPhrzE36c8r1HrT2eRnwjs@mail.gmail.com> (Deniz Dogan's message of "Mon, 3 Jan 2011 08:14:19 +0100")
> What is the reasoning behind displaying it in octal rather than
> decimal or hexadecimal in the first place?
As mentioned by someone else, this goes back to the beginning of Emacs,
so we're talking >20 years ago. IIUC octal was more common back then.
There are still some advantages to using octal: e.g., by using fewer
different chars, there is a higher likelihood that the boundary of the
\NNN sequence will be self obvious: when you see \01234, it's not
obvious that it's \012 followed by 3 and 4, but when you see \012ab the
boundary is self-evident. With hexadecimal, the cases where the
boundary is not self-evident are more common.
Stefan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-01-04 4:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-12-28 15:39 How switch from escaped octal character code to escaped HEX? Oleksandr Gavenko
2010-12-28 15:51 ` Oleksandr Gavenko
[not found] ` <mailman.6.1293551515.18545.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2011-01-03 4:23 ` Stefan Monnier
2011-01-03 7:14 ` Deniz Dogan
2011-01-03 10:13 ` Deniz Dogan
2011-01-03 14:37 ` Peter Dyballa
2011-01-04 4:03 ` Stefan Monnier [this message]
[not found] ` <mailman.8.1294038895.27854.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2011-01-03 13:42 ` Barry Margolin
2011-01-11 10:23 ` Oleksandr Gavenko
[not found] ` <mailman.0.1294741438.20926.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2011-01-11 17:34 ` Stefan Monnier
2011-01-12 9:22 ` Oleksandr Gavenko
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