in reply to Re: "force string context"?
in thread "force string context"?

I got an example, and it seems that you got the point here. $user_id values are microtime timestamps, like 1082021975087815. And it is far bigger than 2**31:

bronto@brabham:~$ perl -e 'print log(1082021975087815)/log(2),"\n"'
49.942651222871

[download]

We are in the order of 2**50, so we really are in the field where rounding errors can occur.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Ciao!
--bronto

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom