Annoying octal notation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:14:25 -0500, Derek Martin wrote:

> Assuming I'm right about that, then the use of a leading 0 to represent
> octal actually predates the prevalence of using 0 in dates by almost two
> decades.  And while using leading zeros in other contexts is "familiar"
> to me, I would certainly not consider it "common" by any means.  Thus I
> think it's fair to say that when this syntax was selected, it was a
> rather good choice.

Except of course to anyone familiar with mathematics in the last, oh, 
five hundred years or so. Mathematics has used a positional system for 
numbers for centuries now: leading zeroes have been insignificant, just 
like trailing zeroes after the decimal point:

9 = 09 = 009 = 9.0 = 9.00 = 0009.000 etc.



-- 
Steven