Although I've used perl for many years, I've just been surprised (in the
unpleasant sense) by a recent event. Given a variable, say "$int",
which is a growing integer, I would expect "print $int" to print it as a
simple integer; indeed it usually does so. But when its size takes it
from 15 decimal digits to 16 decimal digits, that "print" flips the
output into scientific notation:
999999999999997
999999999999998
999999999999999
1e+15
1e+15
Ouch. The surprise is especially nasty when this output data is then
used as input data for another program that expects an integer.
This is consistent across a variety of OSes (although all perl 5.8.8).
I eventually managed to track down a way to achieve the desired result
with a non-obvious "printf" format. (I leave that, and its clear
user-oriented explanation, as an exercise for the reader!)
I'm not aware of any documentation about this surprise. Is this a
program bug or a documentation bug? (Or a self bug?)
Is there a more appropriate forum than "beginn...@..." to raise this?
--
: David Lee
: ECMWF (Data Handling System)
: Shinfield Park
: Reading RG2 9AX
: Berkshire
:
: tel: +44-118-9499 362
: email: david....@ecmwf.int
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