Number format; newbie makes deep heartfelt whinge

[Cameron Laird]

In article <b2sspi06si at enews1.newsguy.com>,
Alex Martelli  <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Gary Duncan wrote:
>  ...
>Nasty to have such weak diagnostics, yes.  It WAS lucky you had SOME
>invalid octal digits there, else an even nastier silent bug lurked...
			.
			.
			.
>> Anyway, I would urge that a better diagnostic be written in this case.
>
>Yes, that would be nice, if one had time to work on it.
>
>> 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.
>
>No, it's not quite as frequent as all that, but still nasty-ish.
>
>
>Alex
>

Good diagnostics are important, and consequential.
I'm following up just to reinforce that.

And, perhaps, to point out that (as Alex already
knows I've often observed) this problem becomes
considerably more frequent just when the original
programming team goes on vacation.  In August.
The 08th month.  True stories.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://phaseit.net/claird/home.html