Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32) Sat 08/20/2022 15:46:20 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl use strict; use warnings; use bytes; use Data::Dump qw(pp); use constant BYTE_BOUND => 4; use constant PAD => "\0" x (BYTE_BOUND-1); my $s = 'TheRainInSpainFalls'; while (length $s) { my $p = $s . PAD; $p = bytes::substr $p, 0, bytes::length($p) - bytes::length($p)%BYTE_BOUND; printf "%4s - %-28s \n", bytes::length($p), pp($p); chop $s; } ^Z 20 - "TheRainInSpainFalls\0" 20 - "TheRainInSpainFall\0\0" 20 - "TheRainInSpainFal\0\0\0" 16 - "TheRainInSpainFa" 16 - "TheRainInSpainF\0" 16 - "TheRainInSpain\0\0" 16 - "TheRainInSpai\0\0\0" 12 - "TheRainInSpa" 12 - "TheRainInSp\0" 12 - "TheRainInS\0\0" 12 - "TheRainIn\0\0\0" 8 - "TheRainI" 8 - "TheRain\0" 8 - "TheRai\0\0" 8 - "TheRa\0\0\0" 4 - "TheR" 4 - "The\0" 4 - "Th\0\0" 4 - "T\0\0\0"