hi, here's a newbie question for you gurus...could someone explain to me what this block of code does? : i have this hash with numerical keys (see variable named 'data_id' and string values (see variable named 'data_val') associated with each key. this has is being converted into binary code to generate a file which is used by my customer's software...here's where the ascii values are being converted into binary; i'm just not clear on what's going on: 
    $bin_data .= pack("s", $data_id);
    if (length($data_val) < 255) {
      $bin_data .= pack("C", length($data_val));
    } else {
      $bin_data .= pack("C", 0xff);
      $bin_data .= pack("s", length($data_val));
    }

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any help would be grately appreciated

In reply to Understanding pack syntax by Anonymous Monk

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