Would anyone miss convertOctals?

[Devin Asay]

On Jun 9, 2022, at 6:44 AM, Mark Waddingham via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com<mailto:use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>> 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?

Nope

 2) If you do, have you ever actually used it in any scripts which are actually still in use?

Nyet

 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?

N/A

 4) If you do use/have used it, had you ever noticed that it has been slightly broken for years?

Wait, you said three questions. But no.

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!

--
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com<mailto:mark at livecode.com> ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps

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

Devin Asay
Office of Digital Humanities
Brigham Young University