Weird PHP behavior: won't assign the integer 8 to a variable

Question

I think I just encountered the strangest \'bug\' I\'ve ever encountered in my short developer life. It seems like I just can\'t assign the value eight to any variable. For exemp

Answer 1

In PHP, a number that's prefaced by a zero is considered to be octal. Because octal (base 8) only has digits 0-7, 08 is invalid and treated as zero.

See this manual page for more information, and note the warning in the syntax section: "If an invalid digit is given in an octal integer (i.e. 8 or 9), the rest of the number is ignored."