From: php at richardneill dot org Operating system: All PHP version: 5.4.12 Package: Math related Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Bug description:Proposal: deprecate the "leading 0 means octal" behaviour
Description: ------------ PHP assumes that a string with a leading zero should be interpreted as octal. In my experience, this is almost never useful, desirable, or intentional, however, it is a frequent trap for the beginner (or more experienced programmer), especially when parsing user-submitted data. The only reason for this behaviour seems to be historical, and compatibility with strtol(). When non-programmer humans write numbers with leading zeros, they don't usually mean base 8. My proposal is: 1. Introduce a new string format, 0o#### (letter o), to explicitly mean "this is an octal number". This is similar to the recent introduction of 0b#### for binary numbers. [This part should be simple to do, and would also make the intentional use of octal notation explicit, increasing code-readability] 2. Add an option to raise E_NOTICE any time a number is implicitly interpreted as octal (for example "$x = 0100"). 3. In a few years time, (PHP 7?), it may finally be possible to change the default behaviour. Test script: --------------- Here's an illustration of a naive program that has data-dependent bugs that are really hard to track down. $mass_kg = "0.314" //user-submitted data, known to begin "0." $mass_g = substr ($mass_kg, 2); Yes, this is a silly thing to write. But it's a nasty trap for the unwary. The above example does what is expected, and might pass many tests. But if the user subsequently enters $mass_kg = "0.031", this will turn into 25 grams, not 31 grams. As a result, we have created a very subtle and hard to find bug. -- Edit bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=64320&edit=1 -- Try a snapshot (PHP 5.4): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=trysnapshot54 Try a snapshot (PHP 5.3): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=trysnapshot53 Try a snapshot (trunk): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=trysnapshottrunk Fixed in SVN: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=fixed Fixed in release: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=needtrace Need Reproduce Script: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=needscript Try newer version: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=oldversion Not developer issue: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=support Expected behavior: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=notwrong Not enough info: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=submittedtwice register_globals: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=globals PHP 4 support discontinued: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=php4 Daylight Savings: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=dst IIS Stability: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=isapi Install GNU Sed: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=gnused Floating point limitations: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=float No Zend Extensions: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=nozend MySQL Configuration Error: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=64320&r=mysqlcfg
