Hi PiEquals3
You could take a leaf out of the XP book and proceed thus:
1- write a test subroutine that states your intent. In test below, I assumed that you want to convert the 8 bytes in $input into their hex-ascii representation, $wanted.
2- write some tentative conversion subroutines, like those below, and run the test on each.
3- if desperate (none pass), post your test script to perlmonks' and see if anyone can provide a solution that passes your test.
HTH
Rudif

#! perl -w

use strict;


sub same {
    shift;
}

sub unpacka {
    unpack "A*", shift;
}

sub unpackh {
    unpack "H*", shift;
}

sub unpackc {
    unpack "C*", shift;
}

sub test {
    my $code = shift;
    my $input = "HAL 2001";
    my $wanted = "48414C2032303031";
    my $testout = $code->($input);
    if ($testout =~ /^$wanted$/i) {
        print "pass\n";
    } 
    else {
        print "fail |$wanted|$testout|\n";
    }
}

test \&same;
test \&unpacka;
test \&unpackh;
test \&unpackc;


__END__


fail |48414C2032303031|HAL 2001|
fail |48414C2032303031|HAL 2001|
pass
fail |48414C2032303031|72|
[download]