Thanks for the ideas. This is what I came up with and seems to work. (Had to re-read perldoc -q zero a few times)

sub connectm{
 my ($val1,$val2) = @_;
  print "in-> $val1  $val2\n";
  my $padded = '0' x ( 4 - length( $val2 ) ) . $val2;
  return ($val1.$padded);
}
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