How to present numbers in a large base (e.g. Sexagesimal)

Question

When writing numbers in bases $2$ through $10$ it is common to simply write each digit in order without padding, for example $$(1.1)_{10}=(1.0\overline{0011})_2=(1.0\overline{2})_5$$ but, for large numerical bases, such as Sexagesimal (base-$60$) we need to introduce padding to write for example $$(1.11)_{10}=(1.6:36)_{60}$$ This allows the $\frac1{60}$ position and $\frac1{60^2}$ position to be correctly identified. I have seen the use of the colon (:) for this as above, but what ASCII character is standardly used for this purpose?

Answer 1

What I've usually seen in the discussion of sexagesimal is to put commas between the sexagesimal digits and use a semicolon as a "sexagesimal point".

For example Katz, A History of Mathematics quotes an approxmation of $\sqrt2$ as "1;24,51,10".

There's also the notation of superscript Roman numerals to specify how far to the right of the point you are. This survives for angle measures, in particular in astronomy and geographical coordinates: $1^\circ\, 24'\, 51''\, 10'''$. (A remnant of this system but in base twelve is used for American length measurements in feet and inches).

A variety of notations are used in computing to write down large numbers in base $2^8$ or base $2^{16}$ -- such as IPv4 addresses in base $2^8$ with individual bytes in decimal and dots between then, or IPv6 addresses in base $2^{16}$ with the digits themselves in hex and colons. Generally, these notations are rarely used outside the specific contexts they're conceived for.