Hi PiEquals3
You could take a leaf out of the XP book and proceed thus:
1- write a test subroutine that states your intent. In test below, I assumed that you want to convert the 8 bytes in $input into their hex-ascii representation, $wanted.
2- write some tentative conversion subroutines, like those below, and run the test on each.
3- if desperate (none pass), post your test script to perlmonks' and see if anyone can provide a solution that passes your test.
HTH
Rudif

#! perl -w

use strict;


sub same {
    shift;
}

sub unpacka {
    unpack "A*", shift;
}

sub unpackh {
    unpack "H*", shift;
}

sub unpackc {
    unpack "C*", shift;
}

sub test {
    my $code = shift;
    my $input = "HAL 2001";
    my $wanted = "48414C2032303031";
    my $testout = $code->($input);
    if ($testout =~ /^$wanted$/i) {
        print "pass\n";
    } 
    else {
        print "fail |$wanted|$testout|\n";
    }
}

test \&same;
test \&unpacka;
test \&unpackh;
test \&unpackc;


__END__


fail |48414C2032303031|HAL 2001|
fail |48414C2032303031|HAL 2001|
pass
fail |48414C2032303031|72|

[download]

In reply to Re: Unpacking binary data with unpack()? by Rudif
in thread Unpacking binary data with unpack()? by PiEquals3

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.