http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=304304


in reply to passing hex argument as string

Well, I'm not sure I'm getting what you're getting at. First of all, the call_f2 sub is entirely superfluous. Now you're comment says that you're trying to print 100. I'm not sure what that means. If you want to print $num in base-10, you should be able to just print it out. If you want to print it in hex (base-16), try:
printf "%x", $chr;
Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't.....nothing?