Well it isn't the most pretty thing, but this will at least let you avoid specifying the number of values in more than one location:

(broken, see update)

my $header_format = 's'x50 . 'c'x150;
read FILE, $line, length $header_format;
my @header = unpack( $header_format, $line );
[download]

As for the documentation inconsistency, I'd bet its just a document error, as I've found file formats among the worst parts of documentation, which is often poor to begin with. The authors often don't expect many people to use these parts, so they don't get edited or updated properly. I would fire off an e-mail to the authors on the point though.

Hmm... if you use the 'a' template in place of the 'c' then I think you can avoid the map and chr in your join.

Update: Argh, posted too fast! This is broken... the length of the $header_format will only be the read length if we're dealing with 1-byte templates, and we aren't... oops!

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser