I've often felt that base manipulation was one of perl's shortcomings -- not because it can't do it just because it's difficult and, as you point out, the functions work in reverse.

I don't want to see your magic function because we'd then have:

dec(998)  == 998
dec(999)  == 999
dec(1000) ==   8
dec(1001) ==   9
dec(1002) == 514
[download]

which I'm sure you'll agree is just wrong.

I'd prefer that the existing functions did what they appear to do: hex() returns a hexidecimal representation of the input data and oct() returns an octal representation. Similarly a bin() function should return a binary representation.

As changing now would be an absolute backward-compatability nightmare, I'd suggest using the full names for decimal-to-base-n conversion: hexidecimal(255) eq 'FF'.

We might also include generic base manipulator, but it's probably more a loadable (module) function (the functionality below probably already exists in a module, I haven't checked):

# changebase($number, $from[, $to]);

print changebase(255, 10, 16);
# FF
print changebase(0xFF, 16, 10);
# 255
print changebase('FF', 16);  # assume change to base 10 when no 'to' i
+s supplied
# 255
print changebase('FF', 16, 2);
# 11111111
[download]

An OO module could even be more transparent:

use Base;
$hex = new Base 16 => 'FF';
print $hex;            # Stringify
# FF
print $hex->binary;    # Return value only ($hex->binary is an alias f
+or $hex->base 2)
# 11111111
print $hex;
# FF
print $hex->to_binary; # Change value
# 11111111
print $hex;
# 11111111
[download]

After all that, my main point is that I absolutely agree that those two functions are completely non-intuitive.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.