Invalid subnet masks

[Matt Churchyard]

> On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 05:49:35PM +0000 I heard the voice of Matt Churchyard, and lo! it spake thus:
> > > On 11 Feb 2015, at 17:38, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
> > > ifconfig em0 inet 192.168.1.1/24
> > 
> > Yeah I've been using that format in rc.conf for years. Quicker to type 
> > and looks tidy.

> Ditto.  Though in the grand tradition of being given the inch and lusting after the mile, it makes me grumpy seeing the dotted-quad netmask in 'ifconfig' output, making me have to work > to see if the
> match and back-convert to add things.   8-}

It's actually hex format in ifconfig unless I'm missing something ;) 
The discussion on -hackers linked earlier in this thread was actually a conversation about changing the output to dotted quad, then it moved on to providing a switch to allow users to specify dotted quad or CIDR notation. Obviously it was never implemented although you don't really want to mess with the output of established core commands unless there's good reason.