SPUG: pack and unpack

[Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 01:35:05PM -0700, Andrew Sweger <andrew at sweger.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Richard Wood wrote:
> 
> > Surely there are many pack/unpack experts out there in SPUG-land.
> 
> There are, but they are few and far between. pack/unpack are a pair of the
> more inscrutable functions built into perl. It's a down-and-dirty,
> hands-on-the-metal kind of interface that just does not feel very
> Perl-ish; a necessary evil, if you will.

I wouldn't say they are inscrutable, just that the templates are a
mini-language of their own.  Formats and regular expressions are also
mini-languages -- just knowing perl syntax won't help you in these
areas.