Without the ">", the output will be platform-dependent.

Of course, with it, it's perl version dependent :-) 

$ perl -e'print pack "d>", -324978.08'
Invalid type '>' in pack at -e line 1.
$ perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i686-linux

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In reply to Re^2: packing a floating point by DrHyde
in thread packing a floating point by Spooky

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