[Python-3000] String literal representation of integers (octal/binary discussion)

[Bob Ippolito]

On 3/18/07, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/18/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > Octal does need to be justified, since some people argued to remove
> > it. I guess binary needs to be justified because Thomas doesn't see
> > the need. :-)
>
> I see literals for octal and binary as similar to raising a tuple, or
> automatically unpacking one in a function call.  It can be useful, but
> it isn't needed very often.  When it does show up, it can be confusing
> *because* it is so rare.
>

Binary is pretty useful for expressing some algorithms or for dealing
with bit flags. Not something you do terribly often if you're living
in an end to end Python universe but I've certainly wanted to use them
now and again, mostly when parsing strange file formats. Instead I
just ended up getting better at visualizing things that are
conceptually binary as hex digits (4 bits at a time).

It would absolutely help if there was an obvious way to get a string
of 1s and 0s out of an integer given the number of bits you want to
write it as (I've written libraries to do this and to work with bits
as lists of 1 and 0). I'm not sure I care about literals anymore
though... but I'm at least +0 on them.

-bob