Apologies for the missing code: 
$v *= 2;
print "$v\n";

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I am now appropriately humbled by the insightful and useful comments. I knew I wasn't up to speed on Perl's internals, but I had no idea just how slow I was going until now...

In reply to Re: Leading zero's, and their persistance by LogicalChaos
in thread Leading zero's, and their persistance by LogicalChaos

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