[Python-Dev] Octal literals

Andrew Koenig ark at acm.org
Tue Jan 31 23:17:22 CET 2006


> Apart from making 0640 a syntax error (which I think is wrong too),
> could this be solved by *requiring* the argument to be a string? (Or
> some other data type, but that's probably overkill.)

That solves the problem only in that particular context.

I would think that if it is deemed undesirable for a leading 0 to imply
octal, then it would be best to decide on a different syntax for octal
literals and use that syntax consistently everywhere.

I am personally partial to allowing an optional radix (in decimal) followed
by the letter r at the beginning of a literal, so 19, 8r23, and 16r13 would
all represent the same value.





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