You're right! I was misinterpreting the prefixed count. That's both good and bad news.

1. Good news: It works!

   As in it packs/unpacks a list of data reliably.

2. Bad news: Its not so good for length/data transmission protocols.

   Which want the prefix to be a count of the bytes in the packet; not the number of fields.

   That means an extra step is required:

   $p = pack 'N/a*', pack '(n/a*)*', 1..10, 'aaaa'..'aaaz';;
   
   %h = unpack '(n/a*)*', unpack 'N/a*', $p;;
   
   pp \%h;;
   {
     1 => 2,
     3 => 4,
     5 => 6,
     7 => 8,
     9 => 10,
     aaaa => "aaab",
     aaac => "aaad",
     aaae => "aaaf",
     aaag => "aaah",
     aaai => "aaaj",
     aaak => "aaal",
     aaam => "aaan",
     aaao => "aaap",
     aaaq => "aaar",
     aaas => "aaat",
     aaau => "aaav",
     aaaw => "aaax",
     aaay => "aaaz",
   }
   [download]

   That's cool, but important to know.