Gerryjun has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Error : Illegal octal digit
How do i convert this $item so that no octal error happens 
 $item = 05540986;  #do not change!

 my @list=qw(05540987 05540984 05540982 05540981 05540986 05540983 055
+40991 05540985 05540990 05540989 05540988 05540992 );
 my %lookup;@lookup{@list} = (1..@list);


 $IDposition = $lookup{$item};

 print " $item is located at index $IDposition \n";

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: octal error
by suaveant (Parson) on Sep 26, 2001 at 00:19 UTC
    quote it... $item = '05540986';  #do not change! a leading 0 in an unquoted number in perl makes it octal... 
    print "Urk\n" if(777 != 0777);

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                    - Ant
                    - Some of my best work - Fish Dinner

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      i know but i cant quote it its from a user input! $item = 05540986;# dont change! i must convert this to a string to another variable but how?
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        In reply to Gerryjun question on how to keep user input from being interpreted as Octal. in this thread 
        my $test=<STDIN>;
my $test=sprintf("%s",$test);
print $test;

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        --mandog
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        Well, how does the user input it? It should already be a string if read in from STDIN or anything like that...

                        - Ant
                        - Some of my best work - Fish Dinner

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(tye)Re: octal error
by tye (Sage) on Sep 26, 2001 at 00:35 UTC

    Two ways come to mind: 

    $item= 5540986;
$item= 0 + '05540986';

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    The second works because, although 010 is octal when found in Perl source code, when Perl converts a string like '010' to a number, only base 10 is used (otherwise there would be no need for the oct and hex functions).

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
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Re: octal error
by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Sep 26, 2001 at 00:21 UTC

    You just need to quote it: $item = '05540986';  #do not change!Then Perl won't try to interpret it as a number, and the rest of your code will run just fine.

    HTH

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