Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:36:45 +0400 From: Sergey Vinogradov <boogie@lazybytes.org> To: Mike Oliver <mwoliver@gmail.com> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: ifconfig output: ipv4 netmask format Message-ID: <4D9F2B8D.3040104@lazybytes.org> In-Reply-To: <BANLkTimjsfUBPNwWVQ=wCtuDZRTFM9dGCA@mail.gmail.com> References: <4D9EFAC6.4020906@lazybytes.org> <BANLkTimjsfUBPNwWVQ=wCtuDZRTFM9dGCA@mail.gmail.com>
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On 08.04.2011 19:23, Mike Oliver wrote: > On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 08:08, Sergey Vinogradov<boogie@lazybytes.org> wrote: >> Hi, hackers. >> I have a question: why ipv4 netmask is displayed by ifconfig in hex format? >> Isn't dot-decimal notation more human-readable? Will the attached patch >> break something in the very bad way? > > Who's using IPv4 anymore? ;-) Long live IPv4! :) > Seriously though, if you give a small amount of time to learning the > hex -> binary translations then you would see how convenient it is to > use hex rather than decimal when representing what are ultimately > binary numbers. > > See this blog entry by Jeff Doyle... > > http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/how-are-your-hexadecimal-skills The article is great, but dot-decimal notation is de-facto standard for stand-alone network mask representation. Like CIDR is standard for IP blocks represenation. That's the reason I've started this thread. And despite the greatness of the article you've mentioned, I think it's a bad itea to hardcode its URL into ifconfig's output. You know, for every single user reading it, and choosing the "way of hex" ;) -- wbr, Boo
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