Isn't 'a2' the behaviour you're asking for?

It depends whether you mean the behaviour I'm looking for in the OP; or the behaviour I expect from Z; but actually, the answer is no in both cases.

It's not a substitute for (my expected behaviour of) Z because it doesn't "null terminate", it only "null pads":

C:\test>p1
print unpack 'C*', pack 'a2', $_ for qw[ fr x ];;
102 114
120 0

[download]

And my OP question relates to unpack rather than pack. Athanasius picked up on a comment in a code sample that was more of a reminder to myself rather than a part of the OP.

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In reply to Re^4: pack() v unpack() padding: bug or ??? by BrowserUk
in thread pack() v unpack() padding: bug or ??? by BrowserUk

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