BrowserUk: Hm, I thought that might be the problem, that read() was returning a string instead of a number (and it seemed to be the case while debugging). But I looked all over for a function to convert string values to (decimal) numbers and couldn't find one.

james2vegas: Don't pack and unpack operate only on strings and lists, though?

eyepopslikeamosquito: I did set binmode on both files...and I had "use strict" in the program originally, but it seemed to do nothing but cause trouble; it mostly meant that I had to put "my" before almost every variable, so I just got rid of it. I'm also not sure what you mean by lexical file handles and 3-argument open. If read is rarely used or needed, though, so much the better; it seems rather rigid and cumbersome. What exactly does $/ do, though? It is defined as "the input record separator", so...does setting it to \number simply tell file handles and the like to return number characters at a time?

In reply to Re^2: Question about binary file I/O by TheMartianGeek
in thread Question about binary file I/O by TheMartianGeek

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