First, you have a typo in your hex string: '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4' (the highlighted 1).  Second, if you run this on AIX (as I figure from the presence of "AIX" in the shebang path), you most likely don't want the reverse stuff anyway, as AIX typically runs on big-endian hardware, which already matches the binary format of your numbers...

In other words, on AIX, this should work (actually it does — tried it):

my $raw = pack "H*", '00000034000031b10191403b8811bb1366e4';
print "$_\n" for unpack 'NNCCd', $raw;
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Thanks so much - it work's great! One other question: what would be the best way to assign each value to a variable name? Again, thanks for your help - I'm definitely sold on PERL even though I'm a novice.

what would be the best way to assign each value to a variable name?

Something like this, for example:

my ($long1, $long2, $byte1, $byte2, $double) = unpack 'NNCCd', $raw;
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(of course, choose names as you see fit...)

Your next lesson is to understand that it's Perl (the language) or perl (the interpreter) but never PERL.

Yes, we are picky about such things:)

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Unless I state otherwise, all my code runs with strict and warnings

I entered your code into a file with the PERL load module

Hm. I'm afraid I have no idea what that means? What is the "Perl load module"?

Perhaps you could cut & paste the terminal session to show what you did?

This is what I'd like to be able to do but when I entered your code into a file with the PERL load module I didn't get anything like your output - I did get a huge floating point number! ..any suggestions - I am new at PERL as if you didn't already guess... Here's my file: #!/fs/COTS/gnu/bin/AIX/perl $raw = pack 'H*", '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4'; print for reverse unpack 'dCCVV', reverse $raw ; ..when I run this (simply type "test.pl") I get : 1331232565922520241.709119561536

Please read Writeup formatting tips. Particularly, please wrap your code samples in 'code tags' thus:

<code>
## Your code goes here
</code>
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Your example will then display as:

#!/fs/COTS/gnu/bin/AIX/perl 

$raw = pack 'H*', '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4'; 
print for reverse unpack 'dCCVV', reverse $raw
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Now, the reason you are not getting the same results is because no linefeeds are being produced, so all the numbers are being abutted. There are three ways to fix that problem.

1. Append the newline character to the end of each thing printed:

   #!/fs/COTS/gnu/bin/AIX/perl 
   
   $raw = pack 'H*', '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4'; 
   print $_, "\n" for reverse unpack 'dCCVV', reverse $raw
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2. Add -l to the shebang line: (This is what I did.)

   #!/fs/COTS/gnu/bin/AIX/perl -l
   
   $raw = pack 'H*', '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4'; 
   print for reverse unpack 'dCCVV', reverse $raw
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3. If you are using perl 5.10, then use say instead of print:

   #!/fs/COTS/gnu/bin/AIX/perl 
   
   $raw = pack 'H*', '00000034000031b110191403b8811bb1366e4'; 
   say for reverse unpack 'dCCVV', reverse $raw
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BTW: Stupid as it is, some people will get upset with you if you continue to write "PERL". You should use 'Perl' or 'perl' (the first to indicate the language, the second to indicate the interpreter (load module)) in order to avoid that.

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