Re: OT: Number bases

Hi!

Chris Wright writes:
>>...
>> So I can still rightfully hope for ternary computers to eliminate
>> unsigned ints!  Maybe one day, when Moore's law will have failed us,
>> someone finds some trick that can make electronic circuits smaller,
>> but only if they use ternary logic.
>
> No, it'll be like floating point arithmetic: a processor will have
> separate circuitry for signed and unsigned math.
Nonono, please don't say that!

>...
> What programming language do you use that allows writing binary
> integer literals with a 0b prefix?
Many C compilers for embedded systems have that.  And gcc seems to
have introduced it, too:

  http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Binary-constants.html

The docs are for gcc 4.4.0.  I cannot check: I only have gcc 4.2 here,
but it does not parse binary numbers, neither in C nor in C++ mode, it
seems.

>...
> So it would express 97 as (1*81) + (0*27) + (1*9) + (2 * 3) + (1*1)?
Yes.  That's a small Latin letter 'a'.  But it would leave out any
space if possible, rely on operator preference, and 'optimise' a bit:

   c=((char)(81+9+2*3+1));

Instead of:

   c= 'a';

**Henrik

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