Short answer: the hex function will convert your strings into hex numbers.

@numbers = ();
for (@list) {
    push @numbers, hex $_;
}
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Perl has an internal representation of hex numbers, where each term starts with 0x, so your list would be

@list = (0xA, 0x6, 0x5, 0x5, 0x4, 0x5, 0x0, 0xE)

Note that simply concatenating a 0x to the front of your string will not work. As well, I played a bit with pack and unpack, and while in theory you can get similar functionality, I couldn't seem to get my expressions right.

Update:Once you have your values in integer format, you can use the bit shift and mod operators to extract the info you actually care about

my $value = 14;
#Examine 3rd bit from the right
print ($value >> 3) % 2;
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