Re: bit type external representation

> for binary and hexadecimal representations. But at the moment we don't
> explicitly handle both of these cases as bit strings; the hex version is
> converted to decimal in the scanner (*really* early in the parsing
> stage) and then handled as an integer.
> It looks like our current bit string type support looks for a "B" or "X"
> embedded in the actual input string, rather than outside the quote as in
> the standard.

I should point out that this is probably for historical reasons; I'd
implemented the hex to decimal conversion way before we had bit string
support, and we didn't consolidate those features when bit strings came
along.
                  - Thomas