Octals

Hi,

I was reading the java certification book and it mentions that octals can have up to 21 digits not including the zero. However in eclipse, when I try to assign to a long, I can only get to 037777777777 (11 digits) before the compiler tells me it's out of range.

long octal = 037777777777;

System.out.println("octal max = " + octal);

Also, by my calculations wouldn't it be 22 digits i.e.

01777777777777777777777 = 0xFFFFFFFF

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.

Thanks,

[594 byte] By [Raphael.Blancharda] at [2007-11-27 8:16:58]