The wording does seem to imply that it would return a list of bit values, but that isn't what it is doing. Rather, that routine returns a list of bit positions that are set (have a 1 in them).
If you just want the list of bits, it is probably simplest to split an unpacked string.
my @bits = split //, unpack "b*", $vec;
To furthur demonstrate:
use integer;
my $vec = 42;
my @ints;
my $bits = unpack "b*", $vec;
my @bits = split //, unpack "b*", $vec;
push @ints, 0 if $bits =~ s/^(\d)// && $1;
push @ints, pos $bits while($bits =~ /1/g);
print "\n";
print join ', ', @ints;
print " <-- bit positions set\n";
print join ', ', @bits;
print " <-- bits \n";
2, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13 <-- bit positions set
0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0 <-- bits
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.