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Re: use octets; and "escaping the piranha's"

From:
Tom Christiansen
Date:
February 10, 2000 12:43
Subject:
Re: use octets; and "escaping the piranha's"
Message ID:
5663.950215378@chthon
>The fact is, that is *not* perl. That is why we FINALLY got rid of the
>"package'variable" convention for the more favourable package::variable
>form. 

Nope.  It's still there, but like your doddering old auntie,
who has a strange accent and still talks about the Ægypians.  
There are a few places it doesn't work, but those are the new places.
Old code continues to function.

>It was _wrong_. It was a decision made on cuteness, 

You're mistaken.  It was a decision made on precedent; see Ada.

>The fact that every technical manual I have ever read chooses not to
>call them bytes, and chooses the term "octet" had BETTER mean something
>to a technical community. It _must_ be accepted.

You're shouting.  I suspect that means you're wrong.  Whether this
is the case, I can see that you're far from conversant with 
the technical manual nearest and dearest:

    % cd /usr/share/man	 # NB: completely pre-catted

    % tcgrep -rCi byte cat? | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    3392

    % tcgrep -rCi octet cat? | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    55

I shouldn't care to bet against odds of 62 to 1.  

    % cd /usr/include

    % tcgrep -rCi byte .  | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    2861

    % tcgrep -rCi octet .  | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    56

Less, but still remarkable: I remark that better than 50 to 1 
ratio is an important data point.

Let's try once more.

    % cd /usr/local/src/perl5.5.650

    % tcgrep -rCi byte . | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    3128

    % tcgrep -rCi octet . | awk -F: '{s += $2} END{print s}'
    4

Oh good.  Now we have 782 to 1.  Can you say "overwhelmingly
more prevalent"?  Very good, Mark!  I knew you could do it.

--tom



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