Python-list Digest, Vol 18, Issue 208

[Jeff Shannon]

John Roth wrote:

> 
> "Charles Hartman" <charles.hartman at conncoll.edu> wrote in message 
> news:mailman.370.1110772426.1799.python-list at python.org...
> 
>>> I know this isnt that big of a problem,
>>> but i cannot think of one reason why they would not allow numbers 
>>> preceded with a 0 to have a number
>>> higher then a 7 in them...
>>> And it seems very inconsistant to me...
>>
>> I *love* questions I can answer! Answer: because that's how you tell 
>> Python you're entering an octal number. 
> 
> That's a reason, but I don't consider it a good reason.
> I cannot, in fact, think of a single time when I've wanted
> to enter an octal number. Hex numbers, yes, but  not
> octal.
> 
> I personally don't think the frequency of use warrents
> the special case syntax and the resultant confusion
> with novices.

I would agree with you, but it's there for historical reasons.  This 
is a pretty common convention that Python (I believe) borrowed from C. 
  Octal *used* to be useful, when there were machines with word sizes 
in multiples of 3 (e.g. 18- and 27-bit words), since one octal digit 
exactly represents 3 bits (just as one hex digit exactly represents 4 
bits); now that almost the entire industry has standardized on 
power-of-2 word sizes, octal is nearly useless but is still carried 
about for backwards compatibility.

Jeff Shannon