c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le "my $s = '00000FFEDFF6'; print qq{'$s'}; ;; my @bytes = split '', pack 'H*', $s; dd \@bytes; " '00000FFEDFF6' ["\0", "\0", "\17", "\xFE", "\xDF", "\xF6"]