Terry J. Reedy added the comment: String arguments to int are quoted int literals. From https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#literals 'Underscores are ignored for determining the numeric value of the literal. They can be used to group digits for enhanced readability. One underscore can occur between digits, and after base specifiers like 0x.' For your patch, I would summarize this by expanding 'Leading spaces are ignored.' to the following (in patch comment also). "Leading spaces and single underscores after a base specifier and between digits are ignored." ---------- nosy: +terry.reedy _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue29751> _______________________________________