> In C, an extremely unfortunate representation of octalness was selected: Leading zero. So in C, 0100 means 64, not 100, and 08 is an error, not 8. Even more unfortunately, this anachronism has been copied into nearly all modern languages, including JavaScript, where it is only used to create errors.
I've never tripped on 0100 != 100 (and never heard of anyone who did — every programmer I've talked to knew leading zero has special meaning), but this "anachronism" allowed me to conveniently write `fs.chmod(path, 0640, cb);`. Thank you, ECMA, for pointless runtime calculations with `parseInt("0640", 8)`.
When would someone actually want to use octal literals in a C program? I never understood why C has this "feature". In contract, binary literals would have actually been useful.
EDIT: After RTFA'ing, I see that octal was useful for hardware with 60 bit words.
Semi-unrelated: I don't understand the note at the bottom or the linked document about the XSS problem. Is there actually a way to prevent XSS that's under consideration?
WebKit nightly: yes
Firefox 4 nightly: yes
Chromium Nightly: no
Opera 10.6: no
IE9 beta: no