In thread Extracting IEEE 754 floating point numbers are two working answers to my problem, that of converting network-order IEEE 754 float values to native float values on an Intel machine.   Although one of them 
  $num = unpack "f", reverse $packed_num;

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had occurred to me, the other one 
  $float = unpack "f", pack "N", unpack "V", $data;

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just 'feels' wrong.   Before finding that thread I had tried 
  $float = unpack 'f', pack 'L', unpack 'N', $data;

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which also works.

Now the fact is that on the Intel platforms pack 'N', unpack 'V', $data and pack 'L', unpack 'N', $data both accomplish the transformation from big-endian to little-endian byte order.   But it seems to me that I _should_ use 'N' first on the network-order 4-byte value, then force the 4-byte value to a native order 4-byte value, and only then convert to a native float value.   In this way the same code would work on non-Intel machines?

I guess I'm asking, which is the more pedant-proof answer?

In reply to Network IEEE 754 to Native Floats: which pack/unpack ops better? by shenme

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