Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!oliveb!veritas!amdcad!sono!porky!mayer
From: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald &)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: unpack('x10','')
Message-ID: <MAYER.91Jun26110104@porky.sono.uucp>
Date: 26 Jun 91 18:01:04 GMT
Sender: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald Mayer)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California
Lines: 28


Inconsistancy with man page.

Quoting from the man page:
>   Here's a subroutine that does substring:
>                  sub substr {
>                       local($what,$where,$howmuch) = @_;
>                       unpack("x$where a$howmuch", $what);
>                  }
>

however using the builtin:
        print "##",substr('hi',10,10),"##"
gives me "####".
but using the procedure as printed in the man page:
        print "##",&substr('hi',10,10),"##"
dies with an error "x outside of string at - line 3."

Could someone tell me which behavior is 'correct'?

        Ron
        mayer@sono.uucp

[Didn't someone recently summarize part of the perl philosophy as
being "never cause an error; just return null and let the programmer
set up whatever error conditions he wants?]

perl version 4.0 patchlevel 3 - sparc, sunos 4.1.1