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Re: EE or CS?

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On 1/10/2013 6:04 AM, BartC wrote:
> "BGB" <cr88192@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:kcll2j$6vs$1@news.albasani.net...
>> On 1/9/2013 6:51 AM, BartC wrote:
>
>> influence is often a sign of being a successful design...
>
> I did say they were successful. That doesn't mean they are now the best.
>
>>> on what is meant by a 'quirk'. Here's just one of C's: if you write
>>> 12 in
>>> the language, it's the constant twelve as you might expect. But if you
>>> write
>>> 012, with a leading zero, it means ten!
>
>> early on, octal was considered much less arcane.
>
> Even so, why choose a designation that is generally regarded as a valid
> decimal number in most other contexts?
>
> Then no-one will ever be able to use leading zero if they so wish. (With
> the quirky but harmless side-effect that, anytime someone writes a zero,
> they are actually writing octal!)
>

putting 0 in front of numbers naturally results in evilness though, so 
why do it?...

most common I think is to pad and align numbers with spaces.


granted, yes, maybe "0o1234" or similar would be better.


>>> And the problem, in case you haven't got it, is that you have to get the
>>> case of a command or filename or option (or URL etc) *just right*,
>>> otherwise the OS has absolutely no idea what you're on about. Or it
>>> might be
>>> mistaken for something entirely different and unexpected.
>>>
>>
>> not a big issue...
>> the alphabet has 52 alphabetic characters...
>>
>> it is almost too bad we don't have more, for example, we could have
>> 208 if
>> bold and italic were significant (and could stretch ASCII to around 380
>> unique printable characters...).
>
> These are just attributes, which are best used for appearance and style
> rather than completely changing the meaning of something. What next,
> colour?
>

why not?...
(not being entirely serious here... but this is a logical extension...).


> But having said that, I wouldn't particularly object to bold, for example,
> being used distinguish keywords from identifiers in a programming language.
> (I've seen that done with underlining.)
>
> However, that attribute should apply to the whole word. Without that
> restriction, you would have identifiers where every character could be
> lower
> or upper case; bold, italic, bold/italic, or normal; and you can probably
> throw in underline and colour into the mix. Every combination would be a
> unique name.
>
> Then you would never need identifiers longer than two or three characters!
>

yep, it is a merit. the possible downside though, is that making each 
character a different style, and including lots of options, would make 
typing each character be a dance of keyboard shortcuts...

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Thread

EE or CS? bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2013-01-08 09:28 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2013-01-08 10:41 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-01-08 21:41 +0100
    Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 20:50 +0000
      Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-01-08 22:25 +0100
        Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 21:35 +0000
          Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 22:51 +0000
            Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 23:23 +0000
              Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 23:31 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 12:58 +1300
                Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 01:35 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-09 02:13 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 11:28 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-09 12:51 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 23:52 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 12:04 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 14:28 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 21:58 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 18:25 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-01-09 05:35 -0800
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 22:43 -0600
                Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-10 12:22 +0000
                Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-10 14:20 -0600
    Re: EE or CS? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 22:15 -0600
  Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-09 10:19 +1300
  Re: EE or CS? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-08 22:54 +0000
  Re: EE or CS? Robert Miles <robertmilesxyz@gmail.com> - 2013-01-12 16:26 -0800
  Re: EE or CS? Dan <dantex1@aol.com> - 2013-02-19 19:12 -0800
    Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-20 09:16 +0000
      Re: EE or CS? Dan <dantex1@aol.com> - 2013-02-20 18:59 -0800
        Re: EE or CS? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-02-21 16:40 +1300
          Re: EE or CS? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2013-02-21 11:45 +0100
          Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-21 11:45 +0000
        Re: EE or CS? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2013-02-21 07:36 +0000

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