python and numbers 08 and 09

I had noticed that the syntax highlighting in vim did not seem to pick up the numbers 08 and 09 in some code I was writing. However, it was only when running some code containing these numbers that I appreciated what was happening.

If numbers have been represented with a leading 0 then these are interpreted as octal numbers and therefore each digit after can only go up to 7, therefore 08 and 09 are invalid.

This can be seen if you try to run the following code

number = 08
print number

You get an error similar to

  File "number", line 4
    number=08
            ^
SyntaxError: invalid token