From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: How switch from escaped octal character code to escaped HEX? Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:03:48 -0500 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1294113858 22923 80.91.229.12 (4 Jan 2011 04:04:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 04:04:18 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Deniz Dogan Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jan 04 05:04:13 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PZy84-0006OP-NS for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:04:12 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:50702 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PZy84-0000pD-3g for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:04:12 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=54543 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PZy7i-0000oy-Qu for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:03:51 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PZy7h-0001HZ-L0 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:03:50 -0500 Original-Received: from ironport2-out.teksavvy.com ([206.248.154.183]:24251 helo=ironport2-out.pppoe.ca) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PZy7h-0001HV-IW for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:03:49 -0500 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AvsEAP8qIk1Ld/TY/2dsb2JhbACkNHS7XIVKBIRljhs X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.60,270,1291611600"; d="scan'208";a="86997545" Original-Received: from 75-119-244-216.dsl.teksavvy.com (HELO pastel.home) ([75.119.244.216]) by ironport2-out.pppoe.ca with ESMTP/TLS/ADH-AES256-SHA; 03 Jan 2011 23:03:48 -0500 Original-Received: by pastel.home (Postfix, from userid 20848) id 1919358D6F; Mon, 3 Jan 2011 23:03:48 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: (Deniz Dogan's message of "Mon, 3 Jan 2011 08:14:19 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:78146 Archived-At: > 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