use strict; use warnings; use constant DLE => 0x10; my $dle = sprintf ("%02X", DLE); print "before\n"; print "string is: [\x{$dle}]\n"; __output__ Illegal hexadecimal digit '$' ignored at pmsopw_294950.pl line 9. before string is: [] #### use strict; use warnings; my $msg = pack "CCCCC", 0x31, 0x32, 0x10, 0x10, 0x33; my $c = pack "C", 0x10; $msg =~ s/$c$c/$c/g; printf ("%02x " x length($msg) . "\n", unpack ("C*", $msg)); __output__ 31 32 10 33