Mark.

Gong the other way, is your task made much simpler by losing “converOctals”? I 
assume so, or the issue would never have come up. Are there other similar 
language elements that also are on the block?

Craig

> On Jun 9, 2022, at 1:03 PM, Ben Rubinstein via use-livecode 
> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> 1) No (or didn't until I looked just now)
> 2) N/A
> 3) N/A
> 4) N/A
> 
> 
> On 09/06/2022 13:44, Mark Waddingham via use-livecode wrote:
>> So I'm currently sitting here about to embark on fixing 
>> <https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23653> (which is the final 
>> thing to sort out before being able to merge my constant expression patch) 
>> and I was reminded of 'convertOctals'.
>> Now, generally, I am somewhat averse to actually removing any language 
>> feature (even those we have deprecated, unless we absolutely have to!) - 
>> however, I would really like to make convertOctals have no effect at all in 
>> 10.0+ as it adds a disproportionate amount of complexity compared to (what I 
>> think, at least) its utility is (particularly in the context of things 
>> 'coming next' like the script compiler).
>> So three questions:
>>   1) Do you know what convertOctals is, and what it does?
>>   2) If you do, have you ever actually used it in any scripts which are 
>> actually still in use?
>>   3) If you do use it in any scripts which are still in use, would you be 
>> willing to change them to not use it?
>>   4) If you do use/have used it, had you ever noticed that it has been 
>> slightly broken for years?
>> Now, its always better to offer a carrot when there is a stick (or in this 
>> case, an axe) being wielded and the carrot in this case would be to expand 
>> the numeric literal syntax to add both explicit octal and binary number 
>> literals alongside hexadecimal:
>>     0xabcdef - hex literal
>>     0o777 - octal literal
>>     0b101110101
>> The key difference between 0o777 and using 0777 (with convertOctals true) is 
>> that the former is not ambiguous at parse time, it doesn't require a runtime 
>> property set to true in order for the engine to convert the string to a 
>> number correctly.
>> Please let me know your thoughts :)
>> Warmest Regards,
>> Mark.
>> P.S. In the scheme of 'breaking changes' - we've already made a number of 
>> them for 10 already, and my gut tells me removing convertOctals is likely to 
>> cause less consternation than those we already have - but I could be wrong!
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription 
> preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode


_______________________________________________
use-livecode mailing list
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription 
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode

Reply via email to