Python Gotcha with Octal Numbers

[Christopher Saunter]

Steve Holden (sholden at holdenweb.com) wrote:
: Chris: Welcome to c.l.py!
Thanks, and thanks to everyone else who has so far replied.  I'll have to
remember the 'holliday' bug with August ;-)

: It might be possible to introduce it as a redundant alternative, but
: generally speaking there's resistance to having more than one way to
: represent something (confuses learners), and this wouldn't anyway have saved
: you from the glitch you experienced.

Yeah.  It'd be nice if there could be a plan to switch to a more obvious
0o over several versions (as is being down with the integer divide) but
it's kind of nice to know that even python has some quirks....
Unfortunatly I started my computing with an 8 bit Amstrad, so I never
experience the old unix boxes...


: Serves you right for being anal about alignment when only the interpreter
: and you were going to read the code <0.9 wink>.

;-)  I guess it's kind of a 'nervous programming tick' or something...

Also, on the subject of number bases, is there an easy (read library)  way
to take a string containing a number represented as hex and convert it to
an int or float?  I've looked through the libraries, and I'm sure it's
there somewhere, just can't find it.....

Regards,
	Chris Saunter