Jack Diederich
However... if %b were to represent arbitrary bases, I think that's backwards. It should be %[<pad>][.<base>]b, which would do this:
'%08b %08o %08d %08x' % 12 '00001100 00000014 00000012 0000000C'
Were I BDFAD (not to be confused with BD-FOAD) I'd add %b, %B and, binary() to match %x, %X, and hex(). The arbitrary base case isn't even academic or we would see homework questions about it on c.l.py. No one asks about hex or octal because they are there. No one asks about base seven formatting because everyone knows numerologists prefer Perl.
BTW, Perl already do binary literals and %b formatting so there is some precedence for it: $ perl -e '$a = 0b1100; printf "%08b %08o %08d %08x\n", $a, $a, $a, $a' 00001100 00000014 00000012 0000000c --Gisle