c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -le "use warnings; use strict; ;; my $count = 17767; my $c16 = pack('S', $count); printf(qq{Count = dec %d, hex 0x%04x, c16 = 0x%04x \n}, $count, $count, $c16); " Argument "gE" isn't numeric in printf at -e line 1. Count = dec 17767, hex 0x4567, c16 = 0x0000