Question

I implemented a function converting an integer number to its representation as a string intToStr() (code below).

For testing I’ve passed in some values and observed an unexpected output:

print intToStr( 1223) # prints 1223 as expected
print intToStr(01223) # prints  659, surprisingly 

Now, I’ve tried to debug it, and the the integer I’ve passed in has indeed turned out to be 659.

Why does this happen and how can I get python to ignore leading zeros of the integer literal?

---

Here’s the code for my function:

def intToStr(i):
    digits = '0123456789'
    if i == 0:
        return 0
    result = ""
    while i > 0:
        result = digits[i%10] + result
        i /= 10
    return result

Answer 1

As others have said that’s because of octal numbers. But I strongly suggest you to change your function to:

>>> from functools import partial
>>> force_decimal = partial(int, base=10)
>>> force_decimal("01")
1
>>> force_decimal("0102301")
102301

This way you will explicitly force the conversion to base 10. And int wont be inferring it for you.