[userbinator]

where in context, the assumption should be that 0xxxx is octal

That's what I thought it was too. This convention carried over into C and its derivatives today.

[kragen]

amusingly 8 and 9 would continue to be accepted as octal digits by the c (or b) compiler until ansi c forbid them

a priori, though, '01982' is not very likely to be intended as octal either