... initialization of  $counting = '00000000'; should be satisfactory ...

Initializing  $count as a numeric string with a bunch of leading zeros will see the leading zeros vanish after the first numeric operation 'numifies' the scalar — even if it's an operation with zero!. 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $count = '00000000';
 print qq{'$count'};
 ;;
 $count += 42;
 print qq{'$count'};
"
'00000000'
'42'

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In reply to Re^2: Calculating/adding byte counts of array elements by AnomalousMonk
in thread Calculating/adding byte counts of array elements by Dr Manhattan

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