Hello all, I am trying to read a binary file in byte by byte. My code is as follows: 
my $offset = 0;
my $buffer;

open (FILE, "file.binary");
binmode FILE;

while ( read(FILE, $buffer, 1, $offset++) )
{
      ... Code here ...
      $buffer = "";
}

[download]
However, its not working exactly as I thought it would. Instead of $buffer being filled with a single byte value, it will actually be padded with null bytes of the size of the offset. For example: If I have the binary file:

\aa\bb\cc\dd\ee

and I run the above code against it, I'll get the following values for $buffer:

$buffer = \aa

$buffer = \00\bb

$buffer = \00\00\cc

$buffer = \00\00\00\dd

etc.

What I really want is this:

$buffer = \aa

$buffer = \bb

$buffer = \cc

$buffer = \dd

and etc.

What makes this more bizarre, is if I undef $buffer every time, it will still add those padding null bytes. I've tried everything including undef, setting $buffer to "", reinitializing buffer (i.e. read(FILE, my $buffer, 1, $offset++)), but I can't seem to figure this out. Any suggestions?

In reply to Reading binary file byte by byte by Anonymous Monk

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.