On 2005-02-22 at 14:26:04, Juerd wrote: > I think \777 should be chr(777). As should \0d777, should you want to > document that it's really not octal. (Important mostly the first year > after the first release.)
I don't think you can assume it'll only be confusing for a year. For one thing, the "\nnn for octal character code nnn" did not originate with Perl; it (still) works in C, the UNIX shells, and other programming languages with a similar heritage. I'm more than willing to give up compatibility on the "leading zero means octal in numeric literals" front, because that has never anything but a source of confusion, but I'm less sanguine about switching '\nnn' from octal to decimal. I agree that '\nnn' should *not* be interpreted as octal anymore, or else nobody will change their habits. So perhaps either making it completely illegal, or at least providing a warning while interpreting it as decimal, would be the way to go. Incidentally, will \o, \x, and the hypothetical \d still work without curlies for a certain number of digits but require curlies for larger numbers? I'd rather see consistency there. -Mark
