ifconfig output: ipv4 netmask format

Sergey Vinogradov boogie at lazybytes.org
Fri Apr 8 15:36:32 UTC 2011


On 08.04.2011 19:23, Mike Oliver wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 08:08, Sergey Vinogradov<boogie at lazybytes.org>  wrote:
>> Hi, hackers.
>> I have a question: why ipv4 netmask is displayed by ifconfig in hex format?
>> Isn't dot-decimal notation more human-readable? Will the attached patch
>> break something in the very bad way?
>
> Who's using IPv4 anymore?  ;-)
Long live IPv4! :)

> Seriously though, if you give a small amount of time to learning the
> hex ->  binary translations then you would see how convenient it is to
> use hex rather than decimal when representing what are ultimately
> binary numbers.
>
> See this blog entry by Jeff Doyle...
>
> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/how-are-your-hexadecimal-skills
The article is great, but dot-decimal notation is de-facto standard for 
stand-alone network mask representation. Like CIDR is standard for IP 
blocks represenation. That's the reason I've started this thread.
And despite the greatness of the article you've mentioned, I think it's 
a bad itea to hardcode its URL into ifconfig's output. You know, for 
every single user reading it, and choosing the "way of hex" ;)

-- 
wbr,
Boo


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