in reply to how to convert numbers to ASCII characters

See pack and unpack.
print FILE pack "C*", @numbers; # write @numbers = unpack "C*", <FILE>; # read

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

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Re^2: how to convert numbers to ASCII characters
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 24, 2008 at 17:54 UTC
    Binary files aren't likely to be LF-terminated, so <...> isn't likely to be appropriate.
    sub read_block { my ($fh, $bytes_to_read) = @_; my $buf = ''; while ($bytes_to_read) { my $bytes_read = read($fh, $buf, $bytes_to_read, length($buf)); die("Unable to read from file: $!\n") if !defined($bytes_read); die("Unable to read from file: Unexpected end of file\n") if !$bytes_read; $bytes_to_read -= $bytes_read; } return $buf; } # Write print $fh (pack('C', scalar(@numbers)); print $fh (pack('C*', @numbers)); # Read my $num_numbers = unpack('C', read_block($fh, 1)); my @numbers = unpack('C*', read_block($fh, $num_numbers));

    Update: Fixed incorrect variable name. Thanks blokhead.

      Binary files aren't likely to be LF-terminated, so <...> isn't likely to be appropriate.

      As always, that depends. It is likely to be appropriate if the file isn't too big and read in slurp mode.

      --shmem

      _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                                    /\_¯/(q    /
      ----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
      ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}