Messages in this thread |  | | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Date | 29 Nov 2000 16:22:31 -0800 |
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Followup to: <20001129181723.A2765@potty.housenet> By author: Jeff Epler <jepler@inetnebr.com> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 04:27:04PM -0700, Ian S. Nelson wrote: > > c) octals were invented for UNIX file permissions and not > > programming > > You must be joking. Read much history of computing? Or > alt.folklore.computers? Octal was very natural for 18- and 36-bit > machines, after all. >
Not to mention that it's still quite natural for a lot of machines. If you ever look at raw x86 machine code, with it's 3-bit fields, byteized octal actually makes it quite easy to read.
Octal probably predates hexadecimal, since it fit within the 0-9 digits most people used. Hex is really the natural choice for modern power-of-two-width machines, though.
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