I want to get from a simple hexadecimal private key to the ripemd160 hash of the bitcoin address. All this in perl.
The best would be such a simple way like ripemd160(sha256(publickey(x))) where x is a positive integer.
I assume you are wanting to do steps 1 through 4 of the "private key to bitcoin address conversion" in Perl: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses ?The best would be such a simple way like ripemd160(sha256(publickey(x))) where x is a positive integer.
Although quite old, these might give you some ideas:
https://github.com/mtve/bitcoin-pl
https://github.com/grondilu/libbitcoin-perl
parts of which appear to have been rewritten into: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Bitcoin/public_point_to_address#Perl