Why is 032 different than 32 in Ruby?

Question

I have noticed Ruby behaves differently when working with 032 and 32. I once got syntax errors for having 032 instead of just 32 in my code. Can someone explain this to me?

Answer 1

When you have a zero in front of your number, Ruby interprets it as an octal(base 8 number).

You syntax error is probably something like this:

ruby-1.9.2-p136 :020 > 08
SyntaxError: (irb):20: Invalid octal digit