From: Dan Sugalski Date: 2003-06-02T02:58:00+09:00 Subject: Re: What is BER compression? (was RCR: unpack/pack Bignum) At 2:34 AM +0900 6/2/03, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote: >Hi, > >In message "What is BER compression? (was RCR: unpack/pack Bignum)" > on 03/05/31, Sam Roberts writes: > >|Is it documented anywhere, what this 'w' template is useful for? > >Ask Perl people, it's there only for Perl pack compatibility. It's an old format for storing indefinite precision integers. I have a vague memory of this being supported in hardware for a few unusual machines, and I think that it might've been used as a storage format by some variant of COBOL or Fortran, but I couldn't get you details. Google says it's used as part of the ASN1 stuff as well. -- Dan --------------------------------------"it's like this"------------------- Dan Sugalski even samurai dan@sidhe.org have teddy bears and even teddy bears get drunk