Python Gotcha with Octal Numbers

[Philip Swartzleonard]

Christopher Saunter || Wed 13 Feb 2002 06:26:53a:

> Greetings All!
> 
> I have been using Python now for arround a year, and have found it
> incredably easy to learn the language, primarily because things are
> very obvious cf other languages, and until the other day, I had never
> had a 'Gotcha' - a bug caused by me entering some code wrongly and not
> realising it.
> 
> It all stems to this, I was assigning to numbers to variables:
> 
> var1 = 1000
> var2 = 0100
> etc.

Just use spaces to balance, eg:
var1 = 1000
var2 =  200
var3 =   45

I do this all the time, in more complicated places...

glVertex3d( -(x_size + 1), -0.5,  0   )
glVertex3d( -(x_size + 1),  0.5,  0   )
glVertex3d( -(x_size + 1),  0,   -0.5 )
glVertex3d( -(x_size + 1),  0,    0.5 )

Balancing negative signs and variable sizes =)

> [snip]
> 
> Personally, I would like to see octal number entry migrated from 0---
> to something like 0o---.  This would bring things more in line with
> the entry of hex numbers (0x---)
> 
> I know it's only a minor thing, but it'd be nice if my numbers behaved
> as I expected...

Steve has mentioned that UNIX people are used to it... i think it's a 
little deeper than that, b'cause as far as i know, _every_ programming 
language that has ever supported octal does it this way...

-- 
Philip Sw "Starweaver" [rasx] :: www.rubydragon.com