johngg@aleatico:~$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E ' my $str = q{myexample.me}; my $length = length $str; my $padTo = 4; my $rem = $length % $padTo; print $rem ? pack( qq{Z@{ [ $length + $padTo - $rem ] }}, $str ) : $str;' | hexdump -C 00000000 6d 79 65 78 61 6d 70 6c 65 2e 6d 65 |myexample.me| 0000000c