Javascript variable with leading zeroes

Question

Javascript behaves differently with values having leading zeroes. alert(b) - prints different value.

var a = 67116;
var b = 00015;
alert(a);
alert(b);
         


        

Answer 1

As the other answers said, the leading zeroes make the number an octal literal. The decimal representation of the octal "15" is "13".

Note that there is no reason to use leading zeroes on number literals unless you really really want them to be interpreted as octals. I mean, don't use var b = 00015. If you're getting that value from user input, then it will be a string (i.e. "00015"), and you can convert to a decimal number with parseInt:

var b = "00015"; // or var b = document.getElementById('some_input').value
var numB = parseInt(b, 10); // 15