Annoying octal notation

[Erik Max Francis]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 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.

Trailing zeroes are quite important when you're indicating the 
significance of a figure.  9 is not the same as 9.0 or 9.000.

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