http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=975537


in reply to What are pack/unpack used for?

unrelated to the Unix pack command, it can have the same effect, which matters if resources lack:

use Devel::Size qw(total_size); my @aoa = map { [ int rand 1_000_000, int rand 20_000, chr 32 + int ra +nd 40 ] } 0 .. 450_000; my @aop = map { pack "l>s>A", @$_ } @aoa; say "Unpacked: ", total_size (\@aoa); say "Packed: ", total_size (\@aop); => $ perl test.pl Unpacked: 100800288 Packed: 28800128

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn