On 23/04/17 15:13, nacho wrote: > Hello, > This could sound like a dumb question, it may be. > If I print: > 8r3 * 8r3 I get 9. > It seems that Pharo converts first to decimal and then performs the > multiplication. How do I get the result in octal which should be 8r11? > Thanks! >
Hi Nacho There is no such thing as an "octal multiplication". Smalltalk has a notion of numerical literals, like 28, 10r28, 8r34 or 16r1C. They all represent the same number, namely the abstract notion of twenty-eight. But it not correct to say that Smalltalk first converts to decimal. The internal representation of an integer value in Smalltalk is, in fact, binary, but this should be mostly transparent to most usages. Smalltalk code does not care whether twenty-eight appears as octal or whatever in source code. Something similar holds in C, C++, Java, Lisp, Python, Haskell or any other of thousands of programming languages out there. If you are used to one of these, you should not be surprised by the behavior of Smalltalk. When a numerical result is printed, it is usually written as decimal number by default (in Smalltalk as well as in many other languages). As Peter points out, you must be explicit if you need a different representation. Greetings Raffaello
