3.2.105 pack

pack TEMPLATE, LIST

This function takes a list of values and packs it into a binary structure, returning the string containing the structure. The TEMPLATE is a sequence of characters that gives the order and type of values, as follows:

Each character may optionally be followed by a number which gives a repeat count. Together the character and the repeat count make a field specifier. Field specifiers may be separated by whitespace, which will be ignored. With all types except "a" and "A", the pack function will gobble up that many values from the LIST. Saying "*" for the repeat count means to use however many items are left. The "a" and "A" types gobble just one value, but pack it as a string of length count, padding with nulls or spaces as necessary. (When unpacking, "A" strips trailing spaces and nulls, but "a" does not.) Real numbers (floats and doubles) are in the native machine format only; due to the multiplicity of floating formats around, and the lack of a standard network representation, no facility for interchange has been made. This means that packed floating-point data written on one machine may not be readable on another - even if both use IEEE floating-point arithmetic (as the endian-ness of the memory representation is not part of the IEEE spec). Also, Perl uses doubles internally for all numeric calculation, and converting from double to float to double will lose precision; that is, unpack("f", pack("f",$num)) will not in general equal $num.

This first pair of examples packs numeric values into bytes:

$out = pack "cccc", 65, 66, 67, 68;      # $out eq "ABCD"
$out = pack "c4", 65, 66, 67, 68;        # same thing

This does a similar thing, with a couple of nulls thrown in:

$out = pack "ccxxcc", 65, 66, 67, 68;    # $out eq "AB\0\0CD"

Packing your shorts doesn't imply that you're portable:

$out = pack "s2", 1, 2;    # "\1\0\2\0" on little-endian
                           # "\0\1\0\2" on big-endian

On binary and hex packs, the count refers to the number of bits or nybbles, not the number of bytes produced:

$out = pack "B32", "01010000011001010111001001101100";
$out = pack "H8", "5065726c";    # both produce "Perl"

The length on an "a" field applies only to one string:

$out = pack "a4", "abcd", "x", "y", "z";      # "abcd"

To get around that limitation, use multiple specifiers:

$out = pack "aaaa",  "abcd", "x", "y", "z";   # "axyz"
$out = pack "a" x 4, "abcd", "x", "y", "z";   # "axyz"

The "a" format does null filling:

$out = pack "a14", "abcdefg";   # "abcdefg\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"

This template packs a C struct tm record (at least on some systems):

$out = pack "i9pl", gmtime, $tz, $toff;

The same template may generally also be used in the unpack function. If you want to join variable length fields with a delimiter, use the join function.

Note that, although all of our examples use literal strings as templates, there is no reason you couldn't pull in your templates from a disk file. You could, in fact, build an entire relational database system around this function.