Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 00:54:54 -0400 From: "J. Hellenthal" <jhell@DataIX.net> To: Sergey Vinogradov <boogie@lazybytes.org> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, Mike Oliver <mwoliver@gmail.com> Subject: Re: ifconfig output: ipv4 netmask format Message-ID: <20110409045453.GA91335@DataIX.net> In-Reply-To: <4D9F2B8D.3040104@lazybytes.org> References: <4D9EFAC6.4020906@lazybytes.org> <BANLkTimjsfUBPNwWVQ=wCtuDZRTFM9dGCA@mail.gmail.com> <4D9F2B8D.3040104@lazybytes.org>
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--sm4nu43k4a2Rpi4c Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 07:36:45PM +0400, Sergey Vinogradov wrote: >On 08.04.2011 19:23, Mike Oliver wrote: >>On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 08:08, Sergey Vinogradov<boogie@lazybytes.org> wr= ote: >>>Hi, hackers. >>>I have a question: why ipv4 netmask is displayed by ifconfig in hex form= at? >>>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" ;) > This is the year 2011 right ? when are we going to support new users rather than supporting old outdated washed up "scripts" ? I for one am for this change, given that there are lots of users from the PC-BSD community that do not read hexadecimal, octal and other such forms like a programmer does. And just because the change can be made does not mean that a compatibility shim cannot be put into place that restores the old functionality. It is time to stop living in the past and start thinking about the future. These types of things are what causes forks of projects to happen ultimately yielding in less contributors and developers. I for one hate to see things like that happen. --=20 J. Hellenthal --sm4nu43k4a2Rpi4c Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (FreeBSD) Comment: http://bit.ly/0x89D8547E iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJNn+adAAoJEJBXh4mJ2FR+DAoH/RCEboQajelKGOCLLMaMn2OD yrqhLvox/b/93gT8n0bfH2XEYaHbwod+oglSquJV7f1Re2CLNZ0VcUHF7MFmjbuI Zzg8WYv7cYFSwfnoFGsHuGLicnAEBVGURbgciLqjcbDLdP+bvE7R2/fms9ohUUmB ot8x3SGCllRjltKtzkG4OWWXrZzNdgwLIOI1VaehWV2O7aEQYmFtts9bKSYC072f crDIdADGen6u3b/+uufmVMKIl7PFIh3h2qEym2gHybghHhThBT30Z5U6T5E97ZId tqmlU1p+YWMCsKDRrOCCLGPVCYH5aGAO1HJOmqIuMCNAEmG7vW6/FRRshCrmlLo= =PrKU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --sm4nu43k4a2Rpi4c--
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