BrowserUk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Is there any other way of interpreting this error: 

c:\test>junk0
'/' must follow a numeric type in unpack at c:\test\junk0.pl line 28, 
+<FILE> chunk 10.

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than perl thinks 'v' isn't a numeric type? The line 28 is: 

            my $s2 = unpack 'v/A*', substr $$ref2, $p2, $n2;

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I cannot reproduce it in simple tests: 

$x = pack 'v/A*', 'x'x100;;
print unpack 'v/A*', $x;;
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
+xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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And the code has to run for a couple of hours before the problem arises. (But it does happen the first time this line of code is executed.)

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Re: Error: '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
by jethro (Monsignor) on Oct 29, 2008 at 14:43 UTC

    I could reproduce the error message with a string of length 1, like this:

        my $s2 = unpack 'v/A*', "a";

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    Wrong error message for the problem that the string was too short to unpack

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[d/l]
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        Yes, definitely.
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