G'day bartender1382,

"What I don't know how to do ... turn off a specific bit whether it is set or not."

Update: This wasn't a good solution (see reply below). The following would have been better:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $var1 = 0b00010100;
my $var2 = 0b00000110;

my $fmt = "%08b\n";

print "Initial:\n";
printf $fmt, $var1;
printf $fmt, $var2;

for my $bit (0, 1, 4) {
    print "Bit $bit off:\n";
    $var1 &= ~(1 << $bit);
    printf $fmt, $var1;
    $var2 &= ~(1 << $bit);
    printf $fmt, $var2;
}
[download]

I've stricken the original code; it's in the spoiler. The output is unchanged.

Output:

Initial:
00010100
00000110
Bit 0 off:
00010100
00000110
Bit 1 off:
00010100
00000100
Bit 4 off:
00000100
00000100
[download]