Yes - that works! Thanks.

I agree that the efficiency/speed argument is not particularly compelling in this case. But a single unpack (when written correctly ;) ) is way more elegant that a bunch of substr calls

Will wait for a later day to better understand why 'C' does not work

Will wait for a later day to better understand why 'C' does not work

Don't wait. Try a few simple tests:

print unpack 'H*', $uuid;;
767adecd8ed2e11191f4b1907aa0b7e4

print unpack 'a4', $uuid;;
vzÌ═

print unpack 'C4', $uuid;;
118 122 222 205
[download]

Look up what the 'C' template does. (Hint: see also ord ).

---

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The start of some sanity?

The first snippet is clear. So is the second, which I verified, extracts the first 4 bytes into a single variable. I do not understand your output in this case 'vzI&#..'

Your example now makes the C template clear - it works differently in the sense that the number that follows the C is the number of octets to extract rather than number of octets to combine into a single variable.

I missed this in the docs, if it is mentioned there. Is this behaviour unique to C? Again I could not find it in the docs. If you used the docs to figure this out, I would appreciate a pointer to the section