in reply to Confession of a Perl Hacker
I too have been hacking Perl for quite some time (four
years or so, although almost never as my full-time job)
and have trouble with pack. I stared at this
for a few, brief moments of total confusion before firing
off a /msg to The Schwartz and asking for a hint.*
Essentially what unpack is doing in that example is
defining spacing and data types for each token in the
string and returning a list of formatted tokens, which is
summarily joined. Crazy stuff.
I've also found that pack/unpack are used far less than they were "back in the day."
Good luck. I look forward to reading this FAQ when you're through.
(merlyn cruelly deferred me to the perldocs for pack/unpack. In hindsight, I don't mind so much, because (I think) I actually learned something. :)
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