Perl – How to do 64-bit hex/decimal arithmetic AND output a full number in HEX as string in Perl

64-bitmathperlprintf

I need to do some arithmetic with large hexadecimal numbers below, but when I try to output I'm getting overflow error messages "Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable", messages about not portable, or the maximum 32-bit hex value FFFFFFFF.

All of which imply that the standard language and output routines only cope with 32 bit values. I need 64-bit values and have done a lot of research, but I found nothing that BOTH enables the arithmetic AND outputs the large number in hex.

my $result = 0x00000200A0000000 +
             ( ( $id & 0xFFFFF ) * 2 ) + ( ( $id / 0x100000 ) * 0x40000000 );

So, for $id with the following values I should get $result:

$id = 0, $result = 0x00000200A0000000
$id = 1, $result = 0x00000200A0000002
$id = 2, $result = 0x00000200A0000004

How can I do this?

Here is my inconclusive research results, with reasons why:


Edit: Update – new requirement and supplied solution – please feel free to offer comments

Chas. Owens answer is still accepted and excellent (part 2 works for me, haven't tried the part 1 version for newer Perl, though I would invite others to confirm it).

However, another requirement was to be able to convert back from the result to the original id.

So I've written the code to do this, here's the full solution, including @Chas. Owens original solution, followed by the implementation for this new requirement:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use bigint;

use Carp;

sub bighex {
    my $hex = shift;

    my $part = qr/[0-9a-fA-F]{8}/;
    croak "$hex is not a 64-bit hex number"
        unless my ($high, $low) = $hex =~ /^0x($part)($part)$/;

    return hex("0x$low") + (hex("0x$high") << 32);
}

sub to_bighex {
    my $decimal = shift;
    croak "$decimal is not an unsigned integer"
            unless $decimal =~ /^[0-9]+$/;

    my $high = $decimal >> 32;
    my $low  = $decimal & 0xFFFFFFFF;

    return sprintf("%08x%08x", $high, $low);
}

for my $id (0 ,1, 2, 0xFFFFF, 0x100000, 0x100001, 0x1FFFFF, 0x200000, 0x7FDFFFFF ) {
    my $result = bighex("0x00000200A0000000");
    $result += ( ( $id & 0xFFFFF ) * 2 ) + ( ( $id / 0x100000 ) * 0x40000000 );

    my $clusterid = to_bighex($result);

# the convert back code here:
my $clusterid_asHex = bighex("0x".$clusterid);
my $offset = $clusterid_asHex - bighex("0x00000200A0000000");
my $index_small_units = ( $offset / 2 ) & 0xFFFFF;
my $index_0x100000_units = ( $offset / 0x40000000 ) * 0x100000;
my $index = $index_0x100000_units + $index_small_units;


    print "\$id = ".to_bighex( $id ).
          " clusterid = ".$clusterid.
          " back to \$id = ".to_bighex( $index ).
          " \n";
}

Try out this code at http://ideone.com/IMsp6.

Best Answer

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use bigint qw/hex/;

for my $id (0 ,1, 2) {
    my $result = hex("0x00000200A0000000") + 
        ( ( $id & 0xFFFFF ) * 2 ) + ( ( $id / 0x100000 ) * 0x40000000 );
    printf "%d: %#016x\n", $id, $result;
}

The bigint pragma replaces the hex function with a version that can handle numbers that large. It also transparently makes the mathematical operators deal with big ints instead of the ints on the target platform.

Note, this only works in Perl 5.10 and later. If you are running an earlier version of Perl 5, you can try this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use bigint;

use Carp;

sub bighex {
    my $hex = shift;

    my $part = qr/[0-9a-fA-F]{8}/;
    croak "$hex is not a 64-bit hex number"
        unless my ($high, $low) = $hex =~ /^0x($part)($part)$/;

    return hex("0x$low") + (hex("0x$high") << 32);
}

sub to_bighex {
    my $decimal = shift;
    croak "$decimal is not an unsigned integer"
            unless $decimal =~ /^[0-9]+$/;

    my $high = $decimal >> 32;
    my $low  = $decimal & 0xFFFFFFFF;

    return sprintf("%08x%08x", $high, $low);
}

for my $id (0 ,1, 2) {
    my $result = bighex("0x00000200A0000000");
    $result += ( ( $id & 0xFFFFF ) * 2 ) + ( ( $id / 0x100000 ) * 0x40000000 );
    print "$id ", to_bighex($result), "\n";
}