03 digression by brute force

[MRAB]

On 2018-12-12 02:06, Avi Gross wrote:
[snip]
> My main point though is that a leading zero can appear including in bank account numbers, social security numbers and so on. But I accept that historically python is as it is. As I mentioned, some functions like int() can deal with them.
> 
Bank account numbers, etc, are not really numbers, but are, instead, 
identifiers. You wouldn't do arithmetic with such a number, nor should 
you store one in a integer field in a database. Dropping a leading digit 
would be like dropping a leading letter of a name.