Question

Why does using date(2012,08,01) & date(2012,09,01) fail but
date(2012,01,01) through date(2012,07,01) succeed?

I’m using Python v.2.6.6

here is a copy paste from my console

In [2]: from datetime import date

In [6]: date(2012,01,01)
Out[6]: datetime.date(2012, 1, 1)

In [7]: date(2012,02,01)
Out[7]: datetime.date(2012, 2, 1)

In [8]: date(2012,03,01)
Out[8]: datetime.date(2012, 3, 1)

In [9]: date(2012,04,01)
Out[9]: datetime.date(2012, 4, 1)

In [10]: date(2012,05,01)
Out[10]: datetime.date(2012, 5, 1)

In [11]: date(2012,06,01)
Out[11]: datetime.date(2012, 6, 1)

In [12]: date(2012,07,01)
Out[12]: datetime.date(2012, 7, 1)

Everything up to here works then watch when I try to do the same for Aug/Sept

In [13]: date(2012,08,01)
  File "<ipython-input-13-765ad867a574>", line 1
    date(2012,08,01)
               ^
SyntaxError: invalid token


In [14]: date(2012,09,01)
  File "<ipython-input-14-f150aaea4c6c>", line 1
    date(2012,09,01)
               ^
SyntaxError: invalid token

does anyone know if this this a bug and if it’s been resolved in a more current version of python that is not python 3.0?

Answer 1

A number prefixed by 0 indicates an octal number in Python (before Python 3). 08 and 09 are not valid octal integers.