How can I pack an int as 32 bits big endian in Perl?

Question

Consider this snippet:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $data = "1";
my $packed = pack("I",$data);
open(my $file,">","test.bin") || die "error $!\n";
binmode $file;
print $file $packed;

The thing is, trying to read it from another language, this appears to be little endian. Is there any template argument that allows me to write it as big endian? I'd like to avoid doing extra work when reading.

Answer 1

Consider using the "N" template with pack:

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/pack.html

Answer 2

The solution is the N template.

my $packed = pack "N", $data;

See the pack documentation for a list of all pack options.