http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=60523
Bug ID: 60523 Summary: Warning flag for octal literals Product: gcc Version: unknown Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: enhancement Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: david at westcontrol dot com It would be nice if there were a warning flag that triggered on octal literals. Octal literals are rarely used in modern C and C++ code, but can easily be introduced by mistake - "int x = 050;" appears at first reading to set x to 50, but in C and C++ the leading 0 means it is interpreted as octal and therefore sets x to 40 (decimal). As octal literals are seldom useful, and often confusing or accidental, they are banned by coding standards like MISRA. But as they are part of the language defined by the C and C++ standards, and are used in some existing code, they obviously cannot be removed. As a compromise, I would like to propose the introduction of a warning flags "-Woctal" which would produce a diagnostic message when a literal is interpreted as an octal number. Of preference, this would be included in "-Wextra" (it probably should not be in "-Wall", since octal literals are valid C and C++).