On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 15:11 +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
In message 452E2DD0.3070409@smiths-aerospace.com you wrote:
Back when I was a kid, all we had were ones. To make a zero we had to
They changed it to zeros later, because a zero is much more powerful. For example, leading zeros can be very powerful, expecially when you employ them in the management of big companies. [BTW: that's the difference between commercial and scientific notation: scientists tend to suppress leading zeros.] And, to quote an ancient usenet posting (sorry, the exact source is unknown to me):
Zero is an enigmatic value. It can mean success (fclose) or failure (scanf). It can mean black or white. It can mean no permissions (chmod) or all permissions (umask). It can mean now (setjmp) or later (atexit). It can mean the beginning (lseek) or the end (read). It can mean myself (getpgrp) or child (fork). It can mean all (kill's 1st argument) or nothing (kill's 2nd argument). It can mean `default' (SIG_IGN) or `I don't care' (waitpid) or `try to guess' (strtol). Indeed 0 lets you talk to God (setuid). Verily is 0 all things to all people.
Obligatory follow-on from a long-forgotten source:
"The decline of the Roman Empire can be traced to the fact that, lacking zero, they were unable to return from their C programs"