is this expected behaviour? perl -e 'use POSIX; printf "%08x\n", POSIX::strtol("0xdeadbeef");' 7fffffff
perl -e 'use POSIX; printf "%08x\n", POSIX::strtol("0x0eadbeef");' 0eadbeef i haven't looked into it closely, but i suspect sign-bit bogosity. -- #ken P-)} Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Golux.Com/coar/ Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ "Millennium hand and shrimp!"