Why Python don't accept 03 as a number?

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 1:46 PM <jfong at ms4.hinet.net> wrote:
>
> MRAB at 2018/12/8 UTC+8 AM10:04:51 wrote:
> > Before Python 3, a leading 0 in an integer literal would indicate an
> > octal (base 8) number.
>
> So, the reason is historical.
>
> > The old form is now invalid in order to reduce the chance of bugs.
>
> I encounter this problem on trying to do something like this:
>     eval('03 + 00 + 15')
> It takes me some efforts to get rid of those leading zeros:-(
>
> Hope someday 03 can be accepted as a valid decimal number in Python 3.
>

Definitely not. What happens to all the code that used to be legal and
meant octal, and would become legal again but with a different
meaning? It'd be bad enough to have Python interpret something in a
way that's subtly different from the way other languages do (annoying,
but livable), but to do that across versions of the language would be
an incredibly bad idea.

ChrisA