In Python, the oct()
function is a built-in function that returns the octal representation of an integer. Octal representation is a base-8 numeral system, and it uses digits from 0 to 7. The octal system is rarely used in modern programming but is still occasionally encountered, especially in legacy code or low-level applications.
The syntax of the oct()
function is straightforward:
oct(x)
Here, x
is the integer value for which you want to obtain the octal representation. The function returns a string representing the octal value of the given integer.
Let's see some examples:
# Example 1
number1 = 10
octal1 = oct(number1)
print(octal1) # Output: '0o12'
# Example 2
number2 = 42
octal2 = oct(number2)
print(octal2) # Output: '0o52'
# Example 3
number3 = 255
octal3 = oct(number3)
print(octal3) # Output: '0o377'
In the output, you will notice that the octal representation is prefixed with '0o'
, which indicates that the number is in octal format.
Keep in mind that if you provide a number with a floating-point value, the oct()
function will raise a TypeError
. Also, negative integers can be converted to octal, but the resulting representation will be prefixed with '0o-'
.
As mentioned earlier, octal representation is not commonly used in modern Python programming, and you'll usually find decimal (base-10) or hexadecimal (base-16) representations being used in most applications.