Re^2: Mysteries of unpack("a", ...)

Or rather

substr 
    substr(do { _utf8_off(my $internal = $_); $internal }, 0, 4) 
    . chr(0) x 4, 0, 4;
[download]

How's that! (for out-pedanting the pedant! (Always assuming I got it right :)

From perlfunc:pack (I'm too tired to fix up the link):

a A string with arbitrary binary data, will be null padded.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

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Re^3: Mysteries of unpack("a", ...) by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 03, 2009 at 06:58 UTC
That's wrong. While `pack` (whose documentation you quoted) will add NULs, `unpack` doesn't. `>perl -le"print length unpack 'a4', ''" 0` [download] If anything, `unpack` should do the opposite (remove trailing NULs), but it doesn't do that either. `>perl -le"print length unpack 'a4', qq{\0\0\0\0}" 4` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]