On Fri, Oct 01, 2021 at 11:05:17AM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:

[...]

> > I would also tend to only support something like "#o755" and forbid
> > "755" as well as "0755", just to be more explicit and to avoid
> > misinterpretation.
> 
> Here I disagree; again, in the manual, the notation used, as an example,
> is 0755.  I see no need for the #o syntax personally.  This is
> especially true if we don't allow integer (i.e. base 10) values.  

Chiming in, I might be the culprit (in this thread) for the #o755
idea: I proposed it only because I was seeing that the argument
was being interpreted as (a decimal representation of) an int, and
thought it to be a good idea to stay compatible to Elisp notation.

Since then, the movement was rather towards consistency with the
shell and coreutils (which also makes sense, perhaps more [1]).

I wouldn't mix both :)

Cheers

[1] If you get over the wart that there is a little embedded
   domain specific language in the arg of this one specific
   keyword. I can also understand Tom Gillespie's hesitations,
   since he's trying to formalise the grammar.

 - t