OK...
{ my $q = $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF ;
$result = $q <= 0x7FFF_FFFF ? $q : -1 - ($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) ;
} ;
...the objective is to take the LS 32 bits of an integer, 32 bit or more, signed or unsigned, and set
$result to be the
signed 32 bit integer value. So:
$result & 0xFFFF_FFFF extracts the LS 32 bits and returns an unsigned value.
if the value is now <= 0x7FFF_FFFF, then it's positive, and we're done...
...otherwise we have 0x8000_0000..0xFFFF_FFFF which we need to map to -0x8000_0000..-0x0000_0001. The XOR $q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF gives 0x7FFF_FFFF..0x0000_0000, so we complete the process by negating that and subtracting 1... or subtracting that from -1.
This could also be written -(($q ^ 0xFFFF_FFFF) + 1)or -((~$q + 1) & 0xFFFF_FFFF)... which are closer to the conventional way of changing the sign -- noting that we want this to work for any size of integer from 32 up.
This is assuming 2's complement signed integers. I cannot recall a sign and magnitude machine (for integers). The last 1's complement machine I worked on was a CDC6400 in the 70's. So it's a fairly safe assumption.
But, you could always: unpack('l', pack('L', $result & 0xFFFF_FFFF)), which ensures a valid argument for pack('L', ...) and makes no assumptions about how unpack('l', ...) interprets the bits.
