Hello Anonymous Monk,

I was afraid that the int size of "i" would be 32 bits, because I have been playing around and I could get the correct output with 32

perl -wMstrict -le 'print unpack("i",pack("B32","00000011"))'
3
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I was hopping since I get no error when I am using pack I would not have any problems when I will use unpack.

perl -wMstrict -le 'print unpack("B8",pack("i",3))'
00000011
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I noticed the: (Note the use of "B*" instead of "B$size".)

Ok then let me describe from the beginning what I am trying to achieve.

I want to convert decimal numbers on three-bit integer (signed and unsigned). So far I have managed to achieve it with the following piece of code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

sub dec2bin {
    my $bits      = shift;
    my $size      = shift;
    my $template  = shift;
    return unpack("B$size", pack($template, $bits));
}

sub bin2dec {
    my $bits     = shift;
    my $size     = shift;
    my $template = shift;
    return unpack($template, pack("B$size",substr("0" x $size . $bits 
+, -$size)));
}

my $int2bin = dec2bin( 3 , 8 , "c" );

print "Int2bin: ".$int2bin."\n";

my $binary2int = bin2dec( $int2bin , 8 , "c" );

print "Decimal from binary: ".$binary2int."\n";
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My hesitation and the reason that I created the question was that I read on pack i A signed integer value. , I A unsigned integer value. (This 'integer' is _at_least_ 32 bits wide. Its exact size depends on what a local C compiler calls 'int'.) , c A signed char (8-bit) value. and finally C An unsigned char (octet) value.. This is the reason that I was trying to find a solution by using "i" and "I".

At this point I do not know if I should use "c" or "C" as an alternative to int and unsigned int for my task.

Thank you for your time and effort, reading and replying to my question.