#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw(all);

sub getBytes {
# split string into tokens
	my @tokens = split '-', (shift);

# map array of hex tokens to array of bytes
	my @bytearray = map (
		pack('C', hex2byte($_)), # see below
		@tokens
	);

	return \@bytearray;
}

sub hex2byte {
	my $b = hex(shift);
# deal with oversize values
	$b >>= 1 while ($b > 255);
	return $b;
}

# try
my $arrayref = getBytes('5e-ff-adad-23');

# check
foreach (@{$arrayref}) {
	print unpack ('C', $_)."\n";
}