What were you expecting?
packing returns a a string that is used by perl for converting between different encodings. The value you are seeing (ABCD) is the value that perl is using. Observe:
#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
use strict;
my $z = pack "l",1145258561;
print my $h = unpack "h*",$z;
print my $H = unpack "H*",$z;
print my $A = unpack "A*",$z;
print my $B = unpack "B*",$z;
print my $b = unpack "b*",$z;
print my $f = unpack "f*",$z;
print my $l = unpack "l*",$z;
print my $L = unpack "L*",$z;
print pack "h*",$h;
print pack "H*",$H;
print pack "A*",$A;
print pack "B*",$B;
print pack "b*",$b;
print pack "f*",$f;
print pack "l*",$l;
print pack "L*",$L;
__END__
14243444
41424344
ABCD
01000001010000100100001101000100
10000010010000101100001000100010
781.035217285156
1145258561
1145258561
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
ABCD
pack and unpack are used for converting between encodings. pack encodes. unpack decodes.
-
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.