From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2010 - 09:22:51 CDT
On 06/04/2010 09:58 AM, Luke-Jr wrote:
> On Friday 04 June 2010 08:51:05 am Otto Stolz wrote:
>> In any case, you have to know the base of every number
>> you are going to parse. This stems from the fact that
>> the same digits are used for all number systems.
>
> But you first need to know if it is a number or a word.
> Can you drink cafe coffee?
> Am I asking about coffee from a cafe (place), or asking if you can
> handle 51,996 (decimal) cups of coffee?
> May I have a fish?
> One fish or ten?
> Just two examples I can think of offhand that make a-f insufficient.
Suggestions to encode A-F as digits and not numbers crop up here every
few years. This is the first I've heard of the tonal system, but the
suggestion of encoding the hex digits as distinct characters I have
definitely seen on this list before. It doesn't seem any more likely
now than it did then.
~mark
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