`1b` can be confused with hexadecimal literal

# language-proposals

[ilya.gorbunov]

1b can be confused with hexadecimal literal

[ianbrandt]

How's that, they have to start with 0x, do they not? (https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/grammar.html#HexadecimalLiteral)

[ilya.gorbunov]

Even if we could distinguish these values by 0x prefix, it would be confusing.
And in fact we can't:
val x: Byte = 0x1b is a perfectly valid hexadecimal literal byte value (27)

[ianbrandt]

Not sure I follow the ambiguity here.

val a = 1b // Byte, 0b0000_0001
val b = 27b // Byte, 0b0001_1011
val c = 0x1b // Int, 0b0001_1011
val d: Byte = 1b // Byte, 0b0000_0001
val e: Byte = 0x1b // Byte, 0b0001_1011

All the same, 'y/Y' could be used instead: http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/coin-dev/2009-March/000905.html

[benleggiero]

0b also looks like a dangling beginning of a binary literal, like 0b101

[ilya.gorbunov]

@ianbrandt So, do you propose not to have hexadecimal literals with the byte suffix, right?

That wouldn't be consistent either. For example one can write val long = 0x1L now, and then he would expect being able to change L to b to have the literal typed as Byte, but instead it would become an Int with a completely different value.

[ianbrandt]

@ilya.gorbunov, Good one. Sold. 'y/Y' then?