here are the details:

i have four different machines (all linux, all i686). two of them are running perl 5.6.0, the other two 5.005.

i run the following test on all machines:

perl -e 'print("0x30"+0,"\n")'

here are the results:

first machine (5.6.0): 1.5
second machine (5.6.0): 48
third machine (5.005): 48
fourth machine (5.005): 1.5

the second and third machine always evaluate the expression to whatever the decimal value of the hex number in the string is. the first and fourh evaluate to a fractional number.

here is a test script i ran on one of the 'fractional' machines:

#!/usr/bin/perl

for ($i=1; $i<64; $i++) {
  print(sprintf("%02X: ",$i),("0x".sprintf("%X",$i))+0,"\n");
}
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here is the output:

01: 1
02: 1
03: 1.5
04: 1
05: 1.25
06: 1.5
07: 1.75
08: 1
09: 1.125
0A: 1.25
0B: 1.375
0C: 1.5
0D: 1.625
0E: 1.75
0F: 1.875
10: 1
11: 1.0625
12: 1.125
13: 1.1875
14: 1.25
15: 1.3125
16: 1.375
17: 1.4375
18: 1.5
19: 1.5625
1A: 1.625
1B: 1.6875
1C: 1.75
1D: 1.8125
1E: 1.875
1F: 1.9375
20: 1
21: 1.03125
22: 1.0625
23: 1.09375
24: 1.125
25: 1.15625
26: 1.1875
27: 1.21875
28: 1.25
29: 1.28125
2A: 1.3125
2B: 1.34375
2C: 1.375
2D: 1.40625
2E: 1.4375
2F: 1.46875
30: 1.5
31: 1.53125
32: 1.5625
33: 1.59375
34: 1.625
35: 1.65625
36: 1.6875
37: 1.71875
38: 1.75
39: 1.78125
3A: 1.8125
3B: 1.84375
3C: 1.875
3D: 1.90625
3E: 1.9375
3F: 1.96875
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now what i need is an explanation :)

I get 0 for all of them. (I'm running ActivePerl 5.6.0 on Win32)

You don't mention the operating system (and C run-time libraries) used with these different machines. It appears to me that you've got a C run-time library that has an "extended" atof() (or whatever you built Perl to use to convert strings to numbers) that, for strings that start with "0x", converts the hex value into the mantissa of the resulting floating point number. I wonder what you have to add to the string to specify the exponent.

Please give us the details on OS and C RTL versions and the config options related to number conversion that were used to build Perl. I also think a bug report to p5p is in order. Run perlbug to generate one of these.

I also did run the tests under some configurations, and was able to reproduce some results :

Linux x86 box :
corion@samson > perl -v 
This is perl, version 5.005_02 built for i586-linux

blah blah

corion@samson >perl -w test.pl
Argument "0x1" isn't numeric in add at test.pl line 4.
01: 1
Argument "0x2" isn't numeric in add at test.pl line 4.
02: 1
Argument "0x3" isn't numeric in add at test.pl line 4.
03: 1.5
Argument "0x4" isn't numeric in add at test.pl line 4.
04: 1
... etc ...

corion@samson:~ > perl -e "print "0x30"+0;"
48corion@samson:~ >
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F:\>perl -e "print "0x30"+0;"
48
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Update :Under Win32, ActivePerl build 517, the script works as expected, printing 0 for each number.

print "0x1" + 0 = 1
print "0x2" + 0 = 1
print "0x3" + 0 = 1.5
print "0x4" + 0 = 1
print "0x5" + 0 = 1.25
print "0x6" + 0 = 1.5
print "0x7" + 0 = 1.75
print "0x8" + 0 = 1
print "0x9" + 0 = 1.125
print "0x10" + 0 = 1
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print "0x1" + 0 = 1          1/1     = 1
print "0x2" + 0 = 1          2/1     = 2
print "0x3" + 0 = 1.5        3/1.5   = 4
print "0x4" + 0 = 1          4/1     = 4
print "0x5" + 0 = 1.25       5/1.25  = 4
print "0x6" + 0 = 1.5        6/1.5   = 4
print "0x7" + 0 = 1.75       7/1.75  = 4 
print "0x8" + 0 = 1          8/1     = 8
print "0x9" + 0 = 1.125      9/1.125 = 8
print "0x10" + 0 = 1         10/1    = 10
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Good question!

0x10 is really 16.

No, I think in THIS sitation (which ISN'T taking 0x## as hex numbers) 0x10 is really the same as 0x1, 0x100, 0x183872.

Tye believes its a problem with the stdlib call atof() and I tend to agree (the same version of Perl produce different results on different OS's).

---

addendum: it definately is the atof() function call that is the issue.

From my Linux box with glibc 2.1.3 (that caused the strange float point results with Perl):

nicholas@neko/3:(pts-0.neko) ~/tmp > cat test.c
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void) {
        printf("%f\n",atof("0x9"));
}
nicholas@neko/3:(pts-0.neko) ~/tmp > cc test.c -o test ; ./test
1.125000
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and from my Solaris 2.6 box (which produced "0" with Perl):

nicholas@peacock2/5 ~ > cat >test.c
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void) {
        printf("%f\n",atof("0x9"));
}
nicholas@peacock2/5 ~ > cc test.c -o test; ./test
0.000000
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