[Eric] > Tim, on the level of aesthetic preference I'm totally with you. > I've always found octal really ugly myself. Hex fits my brain > better; somehow I find it easier to visualize the bit patterns from. > > Sadly, there are so many other related ways in which Python > intelligently follows C/Unix conventions that I think changing to > a default of hex escapes rather than octal would violate the Rule > of Least Surprise. > > ... [and skipping nice stuff I *do* agree with <wink>] ... The saving grace here is that repr() is a form of ASCII dump. C has nothing to say about that, while last time I used Unix it was real easy to get dumps in hex (and indeed that's what everyone I knew routinely did). I expect that od retains both its name and its octal defaults on most systems simply due to inertia. An octal dump would be infinitely surprising on Windows (I'm not sure I can even get one without writing it myself). Do people actually use octal dumps on Unices anymore? I'd be surprised, if they're running on power-of-2 boxes. Defaults aren't conventions when *everyone* overrides them, they're just old and in the way. takes-one-to-know-one<wink>-ly y'rs - tim
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