Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!uunet!ksr!chuck
From: chuck@ksr.UUCP (Chuck Shavit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: numeric from string
Message-ID: <622@ksr.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 90 14:22:48 GMT
References: <13537@cbnewsd.ATT.COM>
Organization: Kendall Square Research Corp.
Lines: 15

In article <13537@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> weiss@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (edward.j.weiss,ihp,) writes:
>Try out:
>
>	perl -e '$m="0777"; $n = $m + 1; print $n,"\n";'
>
>What should the answer be? 
>

Indeed, the duality of a numeric string (both a binary number and a
character string) is buggy.  Here is an example:

% perl -e '$n = 1984; substr($n,1,3) = "812"; printf "%s %d\n",$n,$n;'


Chuck Shavit