* Why isn't my octal data interpreted correctly?
+ mentioned binary literals too
+ excise dec -> hex example (answered elsewhere in faq)
+ this looks like a big change because i had to rewrap the paragraph,
but's it's really not that drastic.
* How do I handle binary data correctly?
+ removed Microsoft bashing comments
Index: perlfaq4.pod
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/public/perlfaq/perlfaq4.pod,v
retrieving revision 1.27
diff -u -d -r1.27 perlfaq4.pod
--- perlfaq4.pod 13 Aug 2002 11:48:46 -0000 1.27
+++ perlfaq4.pod 13 Aug 2002 14:19:46 -0000
@@ -49,18 +49,17 @@
=head2 Why isn't my octal data interpreted correctly?
-Perl only understands octal and hex numbers as such when they occur
-as literals in your program. Octal literals in perl must start with
-a leading "0" and hexadecimal literals must start with a leading "0x".
-If they are read in from somewhere and assigned, no automatic
-conversion takes place. You must explicitly use oct() or hex() if you
-want the values converted to decimal. oct() interprets
-both hex ("0x350") numbers and octal ones ("0350" or even without the
-leading "0", like "377"), while hex() only converts hexadecimal ones,
-with or without a leading "0x", like "0x255", "3A", "ff", or "deadbeef".
+Perl only understands octal and hex numbers as such when they occur as
+literals in your program. Octal literals in perl must start with a
+leading "0" and hexadecimal literals must start with a leading "0x".
+If they are read in from somewhere and assigned, no automatic
+conversion takes place. You must explicitly use oct() or hex() if you
+want the values converted to decimal. oct() interprets hex ("0x350"),
+octal ("0350" or even without the leading "0", like "377") and binary
+("0b1010") numbers, while hex() only converts hexadecimal ones, with
+or without a leading "0x", like "0x255", "3A", "ff", or "deadbeef".
The inverse mapping from decimal to octal can be done with either the
-"%o" or "%O" sprintf() formats. To get from decimal to hex try either
-the "%x" or the "%X" formats to sprintf().
+"%o" or "%O" sprintf() formats.
This problem shows up most often when people try using chmod(), mkdir(),
umask(), or sysopen(), which by widespread tradition typically take
@@ -1899,9 +1898,7 @@
On less elegant (read: Byzantine) systems, however, you have
to play tedious games with "text" versus "binary" files. See
-L<perlfunc/"binmode"> or L<perlopentut>. Most of these ancient-thinking
-systems are curses out of Microsoft, who seem to be committed to putting
-the backward into backward compatibility.
+L<perlfunc/"binmode"> or L<perlopentut>.
If you're concerned about 8-bit ASCII data, then see L<perllocale>.
