• no (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.
  • (nodebb)

    The problem isn't, as such, people failing to distinguish between "flag in bit zero, zeroes in all other bits" versus "octet that is the whole flag".

    No, it is "bit zero is on the left (most significant bit)" versus "bit zero is on the right (least significant bit)". With a bit (sorry) of the first part mixed in. Then again, we cannot tell whether the programmer is confused on "which end is bit zero" or confused on "is it a bitflag with zero on the left or is it a whole zero/one field taking the whole octet".

    And don't forget the other two definitions of bit numbers in octets: bits are numbered 1 to 8 with 1 on the left versus 1 on the right, so there's no "bit zero" at all. In the past (much less today), all four schemes (0-7, 7-0, 1-8, 8-1) have been used, usually depending on the vendor that's providing the bitfields in question.

    I personally prefer 7-0 (0 is LSB) because 1 << bitnumber directly gives the right value, but https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1035 says that for RFC purposes, it's 0-7 (0 is MSB). :(

  • no (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic
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  • klinsten1 (github)

    i find this a bit confusing

  • some guy (unregistered)

    what percentage of the people using this field have actually read the RFC? Not many. Probably a number that rounds down to zero, if we're being honest.

    :pendant: depending on whether you're rounding to the nearest 100, this is probably always true.

  • tatoun (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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