COnversion problems?

[Anonymous Monk]

i am new to PERL. so i have a lot of difficulties in conversions. i am trying to convert Modern numbers to Roman numbers without using the function ROMAN.. also Trying to convert Octal To Hexadecimal number without any oct or hex function. is it possible?

[davido]

Yes, It's absolutely possible. Both of those functions have source code. It was possible for them to be written in the first place. It is possible for someone willing to figure things out to write similar functionality too.

Show what you've tried and where you're stuck so we can help you past the blockers.

Update: One thing I like to do is to establish in my mind (or on paper) what the rules are. Once you have a firm understanding of the rules for converting to Roman numerals, the rest is just a matter of putting them to code. The same goes for conversions to other bases; understand first how someone would do it without a computer, in 8th grade (give or take a year), and then put that to practice with code.

[Corion]

My suggestion is to do it by hand first. First convert your number from (say) octal to decimal. Then convert your number from decimal to hexadecimal. You will find out that conversion from one base to another base means usually dividing the number by its base repeatedly until the number to convert is zero.

[BillKSmith]

Your first problem with "Roman Numerals" is to specify exactly what you mean. There are several issues which you must consider. Lower case letters, in common use today, were not even invented in Roman times. Modern medical practice includes a extension for fractions. Worst of all, the ancient Romans were not consistent in writing certain numbers. (e.g. Even modern clock faces usually display "IIII" for four, but use "IX" for nine.)

[karlgoethebier]

Stolen from Rosseta Code (no warranty):

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw(say);

my @symbols = (
    [ 1000, 'M' ],
    [ 900,  'CM' ],
    [ 500,  'D' ],
    [ 400,  'CD' ],
    [ 100,  'C' ],
    [ 90,   'XC' ],
    [ 50,   'L' ],
    [ 40,   'XL' ],
    [ 10,   'X' ],
    [ 9,    'IX' ],
    [ 5,    'V' ],
    [ 4,    'IV' ],
    [ 1,    'I' ]
);

sub roman {
    my ( $n, $r ) = ( shift, '' );
    ( $r, $n ) = ( '-', -$n ) if $n < 0;   
    foreach my $s (@symbols) {
        my ( $arabic, $roman ) = @$s;
        ( $r, $n ) = ( $r .= $roman x int( $n / $arabic ), $n % $arabi
+c )
          if $n >= $arabic;
    }
    $r;
}

say roman($_) for 1 .. 100;

Regards, Karl

[u65]

But at some point in your Perl quest you need to stop attempting to reinvent the wheel and start using such things as the built-in function oct and the CPAN module Roman.

[Anonymous Monk]

echo 1944 | perl -pe 'tr/IVXLC/XLCDM/, s/\d/qw(IX VIII VII VI V IV III
+ II I)[9-$&]/e while /\d/'

hehehe