[Python-Dev] Strings: '\012' -> '\n'

[Eric S. Raymond]

Tim Peters <tim.one@home.com>:
> Do people actually use octal dumps on Unices anymore? 

Well, we do when we momentarily forget to give od(1) the -x escape :-)

This so annoyed me that back around 1983 I wrote my own hex dumper
specifically to emulate the 16-hex-bytes-with-midpage-gutter-and-ASCII-
over-on-the-right-side format that CP/M used and DOS inherited.  It's
still available at <http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/hex/>.

Do you know the history on this?  C speaks octal because a bunch of 
mode fields in the PDP-11 instruction word were three bits wide.
Time was it was actually useful to have the output from (say)
core files chunk that way. But I haven't seen an octal code dump 
in over a decade, probably pushing fifteen years now.  
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession 
or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches 
in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the 
preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot 
say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear 
such an instrument. [...] The Militia comprised all males 
physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.  
        -- Majority Supreme Court opinion in "U.S. vs. Miller" (1939)