Not forgotten.
IMHO, you don't need that conversion at all, unless there is another reason/problem. Perl has no trouble with a string like the first $gif in your code.

Why would you want an extra conversion step? Maybe you like to dump the hex-string on a terminal, readible to the human eye? Insert it in an e-mail (base64 would be better in that case)? Does the database only accept ASCII strings (BerkeleyDB eg does accept them)?

But if you just want to redirect the data in a perlish way, just keep with the unconverted 1-byte wide strings.

Jeroen
"We are not alone"(FZ)
Update: epoptai CB'd me an alternative explanation of the posting, that makes more sense. His code will do. But, consider pack 'u*', $gif;, CGIPack or MIME::Base64 to pack your strings, as that shortens the strings somewhat.