R. David Murray added the comment:

The main docs do not mention octal, but instead point to the constants in the 
stat module.  The help text currently says "Operating-system mode bitfield", 
which is in fact accurate.  A decimal number is *not* a bitfield (although it 
can be interpreted as one, giving the unexpected results).  

However, the help doc could be enhanced to say "Operating-system mode bitfield, 
see stat module for symbolic constants.".

Basically, the fact that octal works is an historical accident due to it 
working that way on unix, but ideally should not be relied upon by python code 
(though of course it will be :).

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nosy: +r.david.murray

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue25377>
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