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I'm currently reading Learn Vimscript the Hard Way. I did the following experiments as an exercise in the book.

:let &wrap="1.5"
:let &wrap="0.5"
:let &wrap=str2nr("0.5",8)

The first one ran normally, but the second one complains E521: Number required: &wrap = '0.5'. I thought it was the leading zero that cause the error, perhaps it makes Vim regard it as a octal number. So I tested the third hoping it would produce the same error, but it executed normally. What's the reason of these scenarios?

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Actually, it is treating it as octal number. From :help E521:

Set string or number option to {value}.
For numeric options the value can be given in decimal,
hex (preceded with 0x) or octal (preceded with '0').

Trying without . - let &wrap="05" - Vim won't complain, so it has a problem with the . itself. If you try to run :echo str2nr(".5",8) it also won't fail and print 0. Seems like a bug a bit, and lack of consistency.

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  • Thanks! Though I think "0.5" and "05" are different things, in practice nobody would write as such. And only for Vimscript options would such inconsistency occur.
    – ms huang
    Commented Nov 17, 2016 at 14:44
  • Yes, for us - people - they are different thigs, but Vim seems to treat both as octal number and fails on .
    – grodzik
    Commented Nov 17, 2016 at 14:47

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