perl pack unpack printf sprintf cheat sheetI decided one day that I want to master Perl's pack() and unpack() functions to be able to manipulate data in Perl efficiently.

Pack and unpack are two functions for transforming data according to a user-defined template, between the guarded way Perl stores values and some well-defined representation as might be required in the environment of a Perl program. Unfortunately, they're also two of the most misunderstood and most often overlooked functions that Perl provides.

As I wrote before, my way of learning these complex functions were to make a cheat sheet first with all the template parameters and then just spend a day reading more about them and experimenting.

As I usually print cheat sheets two pages per side and the pack/unpack cheat sheet consumed just one page, I added Perl's printf/sprintf format and attribute summary.

Here is how I printed this cheat sheet:

perl pack unpack printf sprintf cheat sheet thumbnail

Download Perl pack/unpack and printf Cheat Sheet

See you next time!