Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Problems with pack.
Keywords: pack,unpack,unsigned
Message-ID: <7471@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 20 Mar 90 00:58:23 GMT
References: <3105@jupiter.oakhill.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 28

In article <3105@jupiter.oakhill.UUCP> billl@oakhill.UUCP (Bill Ledbetter) writes:
: $[ = 1;
: 
: $lw[1] = hex("01234567");
: $lw[2] = hex("89abcdef");
: $binI = pack("I2", @lw);
: @newI = unpack("I2", $binI);
: 
: # Prints out "01234567 00000000"
: printf "%08x %08x\n", $newI[1], $newI[2];
: 
: $bini = pack("i2", @lw);
: @newi = unpack("i2", $bini);
: 
: # Prints out "01234567 89abcdef"
: printf "%08x %08x\n", $newi[1], $newi[2];
: 
: ------
: 
: This seems to be counter-intuitive.  Is this a bug, or am I doing something
: really stupid...

It's a bug on someone's part--but we're not sure who.  It seems that Sun
won't let you cast a negative floating point number to an unsigned integer.
While there's something to be said for this viewpoint, compatibility with
other machines ain't one of them.  I'm working on the problem.

Larry