Looks like you are running afoul of the "special" argument handling that is done by the "print" function, when it tries to figure out whether its first arg is a file handle to print to, or simply the first value to be printed (to the current default output file handle) what ikegami said.

In any case, I think the better way to fix the original problem is like this: 

sub v{
    ord($_[0])-ord("A")+1
}

[download]
That is, your v() sub should return the correct index value for a given letter (between 1 and 26), so that it doesn't have to be fixed by the caller.

UPDATE: I wondered about your comment regarding "weight 1" vs. "weight 0"... are you sure about that? If we are talking about the column labels in a spreadsheet, "A" is col. 1, "Z" is 26, "AA" is 27, etc. That is, each letter "digit" has a "weight" of 1 (if I understand you terminology correctly).

In any case, an even better solution is to let the v() sub split the string and handle the power multiplication: 

sub v {
    my (@letters) = split //, $_[0];
    my $sum = 0;
    my $pwr = 1;
    while ( @letters ) {
        my $digit = ord( pop( @letters )) - ord("A") + 1;
        $sum += $digit * $pwr;
        $pwr *= 26;
    }
    return $sum;
}

print v("AB"),"\n";

[download]
prints "28", as it should, IMO.

In reply to Re: Converting "IV" from base 26 by graff
in thread Converting "IV" from base 26 by pc88mxer

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