Another "Silly use for Perl" entry.

Anonymous Monk asked for a method for incrementing mixed letters and numbers recently, which particular need is satisfied with Math::Base36. Can we do better? I guess, yes.

use 5.10.0;
use Math::Base;

my $begin = Math::Base->new(36, 1009, 1); # base, number, is_encoded
my $end   = Math::Base->new(36, 1020, 1);
my $c     = Math::Base->new(36, 42);

say $c->encode($_) for $begin .. $end;

# 1009
# 100A
# 100B
# 100C
# ...
# 101X
# 101Y
# 101Z
# 1020

# also (with updated code below)
# my $x = Math::Base->new(36, 46664); # 1008 in base36
# say ++$x for 0..63; # output same as above

# Arithmetics with different encodings:

$p = Math::Base->new(8,777,1); # decimal 511
$z = Math::Base->new(36, 35);  # 'Z' as base36
say $z * $p;                   # 42735 (octal)
say $p * $z;                   # 'DST' (base36)

# Changing the string representation:

$s = Math::Base->new(16,18);
say $s;                        # 12
$s->rebase(18);
say $s;                        # 10
$s += 3;                       # 13
$s->rebase(2);
say $s;                        # 10101

# Get decimal value:

$xyz = Math::Base->new(64, 'XYZabc', 1);
say $xyz->num;                 # 36013230438
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Far from complete, but fun enough yet. For me, that is... ;-)

Update: Below is an updated version which handles negative numbers, implements missing operators and lets you define your own charset for baseX conversion, e.g. to calculate base3 with qw(a b c). Also, a method integer() is added which emulates use integer globally for all calculations, and some utility methods/functions.

Update: fixed some bugs

I'll eventually make it into a CPAN package proper.