Converting a hex string to a number

[Bo M. Maryniuck]

On Tuesday 09 July 2002 14:43, Simon.Foster at smiths-aerospace.com wrote:
> eval!

Overkill. Unsafe. Ugly. Lame.

-- 
Sincerely yours, Bogdan M. Maryniuck

Anyone who thinks UNIX is intuitive should be forced to write 5000 lines of 
code using nothing but vi or emacs. AAAAACK!
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially
Emacs.)