odometer:
As for a leading zero for octal: I doubt that a worse piece of design in programming language syntax exists anywhere. Except maybe for those programming languages which number the months of the year from 0 to 11 (such as C and ECMAScript).Let's see: I believe that the relevant rule in many programming languages (including the Arduino programming environment) goes like this:
Numbers with only decimal digits (0 through 9) are decimal.
Except if they begin with 0, in which case they are octal.
Except if they contain a decimal point, in which case they are decimal after all.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
except if they contain a decimal point or an exponent, I think. 02e4 = 20000.0