First a couple of comments.

• If you use <code> . . . </code> it will help all of us understand your code vs. data better.
  
  
• I hinted at the response about 2 different answers to help you understand how difficult de/encryption is. What I wanted to demonstrate was the carriage return that was returned by openssl. If you unpack your answer
  
            unpack ("H40", $digest);
  
  you'll see we did get the same result. My answer was printable hex, and your answer was the raw hex characters. Good for computers, bad for people viewing the results. But that result may have to be chopped or converted before it can be used as input into the next step.
  
  
• This is a nit, but using the word 'byte' ( 8 bits ) is preferred over 'chars' ( re. utf8 ).
            20 bytes is exactly 160 bits.
            20 chars may be 160 bits, 320 bits, 480 bits, etc.

I googled your question, and found many people asking the same question as you, so you're not alone with the confusion about step 2. I did see a reference to 32/64 bit hardware and another about network order bytes(big-endian). I believe openssl removes those dependences.

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