On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Michael G Schwern wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2000 at 12:32:08PM -0400, Sam Tregar wrote:
>
> If I grok'd the bastards, I'd write the explaination myself.
If you grok'd the bastards I bet you'd realize how useless such an
explanation would be. The chief reason for using pack/unpack is to deal
with external binary formats. Why would you want a description that
didn't talk about external binary formats?
> > Maybe you don't get to know how good it is until you need it?
>
> I'm sure there are many times when pack should have been used but it
> got hacked together with something else. The prime example is
> fixed-width data parsing. Most people reach for substr() or a regex,
> but the best solution (as pointed out in perlfaq5) is pack. Yet it
> still remains obtuse and I'm largely cargo-culting when I use it.
I think you're talking about unpack() here, which I've only used once. I
think unpack() is usually replaceable by substr() or regexes. Contrast
that with pack() for which no equivalent replacement is possible, as far
as I know.
-sam
