8 Jul
2014
8 Jul
'14
4:57 p.m.
> and don't forget to use our favorite numbering
system, hexidecimal,
> because ibm was too prudent to call it sexadecimal...
The Jargon File entry for hexadecimal,
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hexadecimal.html, points out
that each one is a bit of a linguistic bastardization; sendenary or
sedecimal are the linguistically reasonable alternatives cited.
("Octal" also has linguistic issues.)
Of course, that doesn't matter in practice; linguistically dubious
derivations run rampant, especially in English, and everybody will
doubtless continue to use "octal" and "hexadecimal" (or even its
common
abbreviation "hex", which really _ought_ to refer to base 6, if
anything - and, in some contexts, it does).
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B