NAME

oct - convert a string to an octal number

SYNOPSIS

oct EXPR

oct

DESCRIPTION

Interprets EXPR as an octal string and returns the corresponding value. (If EXPR happens to start off with 0x, interprets it as a hex string instead.) The following will handle decimal, octal, and hex in the standard Perl or C notation:

    $val = oct($val) if $val =~ /^0/;

If EXPR is omitted, uses $_. This function is commonly used when a string such as 644 needs to be converted into a file mode, for example. (Although perl will automatically convert strings into numbers as needed, this automatic conversion assumes base 10.)

DISCLAIMER

We are painfully aware that these documents may contain incorrect links and misformatted HTML. Such bugs lie in the automatic translation process that automatically created the hundreds and hundreds of separate documents that you find here. Please do not report link or formatting bugs, because we cannot fix per-document problems. The only bug reports that will help us are those that supply working patches to the installhtml or pod2html programs, or to the Pod::HTML module itself, for which I and the entire Perl community will shower you with thanks and praises.

If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.

--Tom Christiansen, Perl Documentation Compiler and Editor

Return to the Perl Documentation Index.
Return to the Perl Home Page.