Thanks for the idea, but I was hoping for something I can use that doesn't create a dependency on a non-core module. Maybe I'll dig into it's guts to see how it's doing things though.
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perl -le '$.=[qw(104 97 124 124 116 97)];*p=sub{[@{$_[0]},(45)x 2]};*d=sub{[(45)x 2,@{$_[0]}]};print map{chr}@{p(d($.))}'