in reply to bitmask to vector problem

How about this?
#!/usr/bin/perl my $s = "DA39A3EE5E6B4B0D3255BFEF95601890AFD80709"; my $mask1 = "FFFF804020100804020100804020100804000102"; my $result = bin2hex(hex2bin($s) & hex2bin($mask1)); print $result,"\n"; sub hex2bin { my($s)=@_; $s =~ tr/0-9A-F/\x00-\x09\x0A-0x0F/; $s; } sub bin2hex { my($s)=@_; $s =~ tr/\x00-\x09\x0A-0x0F/0-9A-F/; $s; }