Number format; newbie makes deep heartfelt whinge

[Gary Duncan]

The subject could just have been "inadequate Python diagnostic", or worse language.

I've been hacking a bit of Python code to create a list of tuples,
each tuple being a numeric pair of start_date,end-date, extracted
as ASCII strings from a file.

I kept getting "SyntaxError: invalid token" diagnostics when
I ran the program, on certain tuples.

Being a newbie, I interpreted this to mean some sort of formatting error
(too many spaces?, comma in wrong place, naughty TAB somewhere , etc)

The crux of the problem, as I belatedly discovered, was because each number
had leading zeroes and were being interpreted as OCTAL numbers, and the
diagnostic was occuring on the first number with a digit >7.

I've always felt that the C-convention of attempting to convert a number
with a leading 0 to octal was one of the few stupidities that K & R could
be accused of . Too bad that Python has to be locked into it via its
dependency on the underlying C-libs.

Anyway, I would urge that a better diagnostic be written in this case.
Wouldn't be surprised if there were large numbers of cases in Python
where this vague and useless diagnostic was returned to puzzle and frustrate.

(Timbot: I'd like to provide code fixes but I'm going to be too busy in
  the foreseeable future in surveying the results of the recent horrendous
  bushfires DownUnder. No doubt you and other US Pythonistas are also busy
  with snow shovels, and lining your plush mansions with plastic sheeting
  and duct tape  :->


- Gary (who can't resist ending with a bit of final sarcasm, albeit mild)