Re: Cross-platform programming question...

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

Roger Johnstone (roger@ihug.invalid) writes:
> In <KRHmb.34474$Rd4.15280@fed1read07> Scott Alfter wrote:
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>> In article <bnesff$b90$1@acme.gcfn.org>,
>> Dave Althoff Jr <dalloff@gcfn.org> wrote:
>>>Just a simple one...
>>>
>>>When we refer to a hexadecimal number, we designate it like this:
>>>
>>>$FB6F
>>>
>>>When anybody else does it, they do it like this:
>>>
>>>0xFB6F
>> 
>> That's C notation, which started on UN*X and spread elsewhere from 
>> there... anybody who's written stuff in C or C++ will be familiar with 
>> that.  The TI-99/4(A) folks have yet another notation they use...">" 
>> instead of "$" or "0x", IIRC.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are 
>> other forms used by Atari, Commodore, and other 8-bit machines.
> 
> Some other systems used the dollar sign, probably copied from Apple or 
> from the same source Apple adopted their convention from. IIRC, BBC 
> Micro and MS QBasic use an ampersand prefix for hexadecimal e.g. &FB6F.
> 
I'm pretty sure Apple was not the source of the dollar sign.

If you looked at any 6502 assembly language, it was almost always
using a dollar sign to denote hex.  I didn't have an Apple back then,
but I did have a KIM-1 in 1979, and I never noticed anything but
dollar signs.  I did read Byte from the first issue, and I know I
looked through the back issues as soon as I got that KIM-1, and
I don't remember any code for the 6502, at the very least, that did
not use the dollar sign.

  Michael