Wise Monks,
I have just come across a problem which I could not solve for a while. Ad rem, here is the script:

perl -e '$a = 127; printf "original:%04x, bit-negative version:%04x\n", $a, ~$a;'

which produces some output, i.e:

original:007f, bit-negative version:ffffff80

However I would like to receive a bit different one:

original:007f, bit-negative version:ff80

Having searched throughout the monastery, I have found a hint which lead me to write a better script hint:

perl -e '$a = 127; $b = pack S, ~$a; $b = unpack S, $b; printf "%X, %X\n", $b, ~$a;'

My questions is if there is a more friendly way of casting/formatting numbers in Perl? Like (casting) I know from C.

In reply to Casting numbers by bfilipow

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