Octal

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 07:34 pm, Alexey Toptygin wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2006, aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > Someones signiture (the "real programmers
> > get confused as Oct 31 = Dec 25") reminded
> > me about Octal.
> >
> > I have heard of it, and know it's still used
> > on the Calculator program on Windoze (2K),
> > on the computers at work, but unlike Hex,
> > Dec and Binary I have no idea what it could
> > be used for, and why it would still be used
> > today. Anyone care to fill in the gaps, please?
>
> To write down integers, perhaps? Hex is nice if your bits come in
> multiples of 4; octal is nice if your bits come in multiples of 3. People
> on this list claim to have computers with 12, 18, 24, 36, and 48 bit
> registers, IIRC.

And in addition to which I would guess that it's always been easier to get 
devices (including both display devices and decoder chips and whatnot) that 
will display all octal digits than will display hex characters...


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