Initializing $count as a numeric string with a bunch of leading zeros will see the leading zeros vanish after the first numeric operation 'numifies' the scalar — even if it's an operation with zero!

So do not numify it but use Perl's little quirks to do the trick:

perl -wMstrict -le 'my $count = "00000000";
     print qq{"$count"};

     ++$count for 1 .. 42;

     print qq{"$count"};'

[download]

Cheers, Sören

Créateur des bugs mobiles - let loose once, run everywhere.
(hooked on the Perl Programming language)

In reply to Re^3: Calculating/adding byte counts of array elements by Happy-the-monk
in thread Calculating/adding byte counts of array elements by Dr Manhattan

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