oct accepts the octal, hex or binary representation of a number, a string, as argument. That string is converted to a number. Only pass strings to oct. It doesn't make sense to pass numbers to oct.

• oct(0xFF) is the same thing as oct(255). oct requires a string, so 255 is converted to a string, and oct("255") == 173.
• oct(0b10000) is the same thing as oct(16). oct requires a string, so 16 is converted to a string, and oct("16") == 14.
• When use strict; is not used, barewords that aren't function calls are treated as string literals. ff is therefore the same thing as 'ff'.

#!perl -l
print 0255;             # 173
print oct('255');       # 173
print oct(255);         # 173
print oct(0xFF);        # 173
print oct(0b11111111);  # 173
print oct(250+5);       # 173

print 255;              # 255
print 0xFF;             # 255
print 0b11111111;       # 255
print 250+5;            # 255

print 016;              #  14
print oct('16');        #  14
print oct(16);          #  14
print oct(0x10);        #  14
print oct(0b00010000);  #  14
print oct(10+6);        #  14

print 16;               #  16
print 0x10;             #  16
print 0b00010000;       #  16
print 10+6;             #  16
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