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in reply to Re^2: A philosophical pondering concerning hexes
in thread A philosophical pondering concerning hexes

So, you want something like this?

inputoct resultComment
10771Octal
108108Decimal
109109Decimal
10a266Hexadecimal
10f271Hexadecimal
10g8Octal, ignoring 'g'

Does that seem anyway sensible or useful to you? Or perhaps oct 108 should return 89 (because it's base 9?). And should oct 45 be 29 (because it's base 6)?.

Abigail

  • Comment on Re: A philosophical pondering concerning hexes

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Re^2: A philosophical pondering concerning hexes
by diotalevi (Canon) on Jun 24, 2004 at 13:13 UTC

    No, the result of oct("108") is "8" but I think it should be undef.

[reply]
[d/l]
      How do your statements: No, I didn't give oct a valid hex number, I gave it an invalid octal number which could have been understood as an otherwise valid decimal number. and No, the result of oct("108") is "8" but I think it should be undef. relate to each other? 108 is an otherwise valid decimal number. You also seem to be defending, or at least sharing, the OP's ideas. And the OP wants to have a function that given decimal input, returns the decimal representation - so oct 108 (or whatever name this function has) should return 108.

      If you think that oct 108 should be undefined, and not 8, do you also think that $x = "10 dogs" + "5 chickens" should result in $x being undefined, and not 15? What about 

      print "Please enter a number: ";
my $num = <>;
printf "Its square is %d.\n" => $num * $num if $num =~ /^\d+$/;

      [download]
      Should that print "Its square is 0.", after issueing a warning?

      Abigail

[reply]
[d/l]

        I had not noticed previously that oct( "108" ) == 8 because oct( "10" ) == 8 and "108" =~ /^[0-7]+/. My initial thought on seeing 8 out of "108" was that oct() was returning some sort of nonsense value. I get it now that it is the same thing as oct( "10 foo" ).

        Thanks.

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