number to hexadecimal and back again?

[PA <petite.abeille@...>]

Hello,

This must be rather trivial, but I'm not quite sure how to handle it 
using only Lua's core libraries...

I have a number which I convert to its hex representation:

string.format( "%x", 1108340100 )

-> 420fed84

How to I get the number back?

I tried the obvious:

tonumber( "420fed84" )

--> nil

But no dice. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Cheers

--
PA, Onnay Equitursay
http://alt.textdrive.com/