it was pointed out to me that I was way off the mark.. sorry... perhaps this little snippet will give you something to experiment with that may provide you with the insight you are hoping to find

use strict;
#Experiment with commenting out the next line!
binmode STDIN, ":raw";
print "Just hit the enter key!\n";
my $char = <STDIN>;
my $bits = unpack "B*", $char;
print "[Enter]'ed  bits: $bits \n";
my $bits = unpack "B*", '\n';
print "The literal bits: $bits \n";
[download]