Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!ccount
From: ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Does it have to be like this?
Summary: backwards compatability is a pain
Keywords: octal
Message-ID: <1990Oct12.060936.7501@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 12 Oct 90 06:09:36 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 29

010 < 10.  I can deal.
010.0 > 10.  This bugs me.

(Patchlevel 28)

I know what's happening, I hope it can be changed.  It's just too obscure.

The annoying thing is that I discovered this when discussing a C
compiler's annoying failure to deal with '-08.123'.  I wanted to show
him how a _good_ language would handle it.  Oh boy.

Oh, and:

$x = 010.;

is a syntax error.

just so you know,
Craig

PS:  To explain for the the confused: a leading 0 on an integer
indicates that the number is in octal, e.g. '077'.  When perl 3.0/28
sees '010', it's taken to be 8 so (010 < 10).  Ok, so far so bad.  But
(correct me if I'm wrong, Larry) 010.0 is parsed as the numbers 8 and
0, with the '.'  indicating a string concatenation, so 010.0 is 80 and
(010.0 > 10).  Now, as an exercise, explain why
010.0 - 010.0000 == 720

Oh boy.