use strict;
use warnings;

my $string = "0x010203";
my @in = split(//, $string);
shift @in;
shift @in;
my $bytes = int(scalar(@in) / 2);
my $output = pack('H2' x $bytes, @in);

# print out the converted output, just to double check
print unpack ('H2' x $bytes, $output);
$output =~ s/[\x00-\x1F\xFF]/./g; # ASCII representation of hex value of byte
print " $output\n";               # ASCII character for each byte