Thanks, guys - here is what I ended up doing:

  my $buffer;
  open INF, $srcfile
    or die "\nCan't open $srcfile for reading: $!\n";
  binmode INF;
  while (read (INF, $buffer, 1)) {
    # to string 
    my $bits = unpack("b*", $buffer);
    # count total length, though = # bits
    my $tot = length($bits);
    # count 1s
    my $num1s = 0;
    while ($bits =~ /1/g) { $num1s++ };
    # count 0s
    my $num0s = 0;
    while ($bits =~ /0/g) { $num0s++ };
    # print info   
    print "$bits\n";
    print "$num1s 1's; $num0s 0's; $tot total length\n"; 
  }
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Something I have encountered during my research is the "vec" function (built in) and the Bit::Vector module. Am I correct to assume that both of these provide some level of functionality meant to easily manage/manipulate a series of bits (or boolean values) that are contained inside of an array? TIA