Why are 008 and 009 invalid keys for Python dicts?

Question

Why is it that I can't have 008 or 009 be keys for a Python dict, but 001-007 are fine? Example:

some_dict = {
    001: "spam",
    002: "eggs",
    003: "foo",
    004: "bar",
    008: "anything", # Throws a SyntaxError
    009: "nothing"   # Throws a SyntaxError
    }

Update: Problem solved. I wasn't aware that starting a literal with a zero made it octal. That seems really odd. Why zero?

Answer 1

In python and some other languages, if you start a number with a 0, the number is interpreted as being in octal (base 8), where only 0-7 are valid digits. You'll have to change your code to this:

some_dict = { 
    1: "spam",
    2: "eggs",
    3: "foo",
    4: "bar",
    8: "anything",
    9: "nothing" }

Or if the leading zeros are really important, use strings for the keys.