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perlperl-data-structures

Perl long data type

I am writing an app in Perl that requires long data type instead of integers. How can I achieve this. For example;

my $num = sprintf('%ld', 27823221234);

print $num;

The output is not a long, but an integer.

Solution

  • Here is some code that illustrates some of how Perl behaves - derived from your example:

    use strict;
use warnings;

my $num = sprintf("%ld", 27823221234);
print "$num\n";

my $val = 27823221234;
my $str = sprintf("%ld", $val);
printf "%d = %ld = %f = %s\n", $val, $val, $val, $val;
printf "%d = %ld = %f = %s\n", $str, $str, $str, $str;

    With a 64-bit Perl, this yields:

    27823221234
27823221234 = 27823221234 = 27823221234.000000 = 27823221234
27823221234 = 27823221234 = 27823221234.000000 = 27823221234

    If you really need big number (hundreds of digits), then look into the modules that support them. For example: