Remove Support for Small Octals

[gdamore]

No description provided.

[dkorpel]

N.b. the wrong grammar is filed as issue 19070 and has a PR: dlang/dlang.org#3066

[dkorpel]

Here's a PR that attempted to implement this: dlang/dmd#8490

[ichordev]

Why not just have leading 0s be ignored? Perhaps with a depreciation warning at first.
Also, I feel like octal integer literals are an integral enough feature to not be relegated to the standard library (which many projects can’t use), so why not propose to expand them again using a different syntax: 0o1234

It just seems a bit reductive to make a breaking change that will benefit nobody who uses the language. I can see the argument for compiler developers, but it’s not that big of a deal.

[gdamore]

I would be supportive of an Oo123 syntax. That would be fine, if folks want octal literals.

The problem with the current syntax is that the only octal literals you can express are 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07. That's it. All other octals (apart from 0, which is arguably just a decimal literal) are not permitted. The claim is that those 7 specific octals are unambiguous, because they have the same value in octal, decimal (and also hexadecimal).

But this is silly. Either we should eliminate the leading zero, or support it fully. The decision was made to not support it, on the basis that it causes confusion. This might be the sole place that D has made a choice intended to reduce confusion on the part of the developer!

At any rate, I think we should be consistent.

[gdamore]

ping?

[mdparker]

See #234 (comment)