Numeric literals in other than base 10 - was Annoying octal notation

[James Harris]

On 23 Aug, 00:16, Mel <mwil... at the-wire.com> wrote:
> James Harris wrote:
> > I have no idea why Ada which uses the # also apparently uses it to end
> > a number
>
> >   2#1011#, 8#7621#, 16#c26b#
>
> Interesting.  They do it because of this example from
> <http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83rat/html/ratl-02-01.html#2.1>:

Thanks for providing an explanation.

>
> 2#1#E8                    -- an integer literal of value 256
>
> where the E prefixes a power-of-2 exponent, and can't be taken as a digit of
> the radix.  That is to say
>
> 16#1#E2
>
> would also equal 256, since it's 1*16**2 .

Here's another suggested number literal format. First, keep the
familar 0x and 0b of C and others and to add 0t for octal. (T is the
third letter of octal as X is the third letter of hex.) The numbers
above would be

  0b1011, 0t7621, 0xc26b

Second, allow an arbitrary number base by putting base and number in
quotes after a zero as in

  0"2:1011", 0"8:7621", 0"16:c26b"

This would work for arbitrary bases and allows an exponent to be
tagged on the end. It only depends on zero followed by a quote mark
not being used elsewhere. Finally, although it uses a colon it doesn't
take it away from being used elsewhere in the language.

Another option:

  0.(2:1011), 0.(8:7621), 0.(16:c26b)

where the three characters "0.(" begin the sequence.

Comments? Improvements?

James