What? It seems to me that Z* does stop at the zero byte, it's only Z with a finite number that does not stop. Look. 

$ perl -we '($a,$b)= unpack "Z*a*", "nine\0eight"; warn ">>$a<< >>$b<<
+";'
>>nine<< >>eight<< at -e line 1.
$ perl -we '($a,$b)= unpack "Z8a*", "nine\0eight"; warn ">>$a<< >>$b<<
+";'
>>nine<< >>ht<< at -e line 1.

[download]

This was with perl, v5.8.1 built for i686-linux.

Update: just checked, with perl 5.6.1, I get the wrong behaviour, that is, Z* consumes all the string.

In reply to Re: Re: How much was unpack()ed? by ambrus
in thread How much was unpack()ed? by Stevie-O

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.