Thanks for the reply but I've already found the error. I've updated the code to what it currently is, EXCEPT that I've left the $number/= 2; line (which made the error appear). It seems that it tried to assign a $number % 2 to an element of an array, but it couldn't since $number wasn't guaranteed to be a whole number (and I guess that makes % fail), I've changed the $number/= 2; to $number = int($number/ 2) and now it works perfectly :)

$number wasn't guaranteed to be a whole number (and I guess that makes % fail)

No, Perl is OK with that:

 3:03 >perl -MData::Dump -wE "my @array; $array[5.35968 % 2] = 42; dd 
+\@array;"
[undef, 42]

 3:03 >
[download]

But the original loop almost certainly wasn’t doing what you thought it was. With an initial value of 192:

 3:03 >perl -wE "my $iterations = 0; my $number = 192; while ($number 
+!= 0) { $number /= 2; ++$iterations; } say qq[$iterations iterations]
+;"
1083 iterations

 3:06 >
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The loop terminates when $number is zero, but (on my Perl, which is 64-bit) this test doesn’t succeed until division by two has reduced $number all the way down to half of 4.94065645841247 × 10^-324 — which is a very small number!

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

$ perl -E 'say 12.5 % 10.5'
2
[download]




Dave