You could view every register and memory address as already containing a collection of bits.

Binary and decimal are representations, a way of displaying something. The computer does not need to represent the bits in a human readable way (e.g. binary) to operate on them. No conversion occurs, because the binary representation of a scalar describes what's already in the scalar.

What other way is there to look at it?

use strict;
use warnings;

foo(1, 2);
foo(1, 3);
foo(5, 2);
foo(7, 3);

sub foo {
    my ($n, $p) = @_;
    print "$n << $p   = ", $n << $p  , "\n";
    print "$n * 2**$p = ", $n * 2**$p, "\n\n";
}

__END__

1 << 2   = 4
1 * 2**2 = 4

1 << 3   = 8
1 * 2**3 = 8

5 << 2   = 20
5 * 2**2 = 20

7 << 3   = 56
7 * 2**3 = 56
[download]

Toolic -

That's cool - thanks.

You know, the people who give negative reputation to people who ask questions should be banned permanently from this site. Here is a news flash: this is a discussion forum. If that offends you, then go elsewhere.

By the way, I welcome all negative reputation. In fact, if I get to negative 100,000 by next week, I will be very happy. If you think giving me negative reputation is going to dissuade me from asking questions, then you are an imbecile.

You know, the people who give negative reputation...

You know its a taboo to discuss XP outside of PerlMonks Discussion, right? Where should I post X?

Disclaimer: I didn't vote on your post, nor would I downvote it if I had votes left today (nor upvote it, as it was really pretty banal).

Here is a news flash: votes are at the voter's discretion. There's already a system in place to discourage downvoting. Throwing a tantrum isn't it. If that offends you, perhaps you should go elsewhere. Or, enjoy your negative reputation--which doesn't prevent posting, but it does suggest that the community isn't especially interested in your input into its norms, now, doesn't it?