You seem to really want to get the numerical value of the bytes in the file. (You are specifying there that you are not reading the file as unicode, just raw data.) That can be done with ord:

my $value = ord $byte;
my @values = map { ord } split //, $bytes;
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or with the "C" template using unpack.

my $value = unpack "C", $byte;
my @values = unpack "C*", $bytes;
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If you wanted the hexadecimal representation of the byte value you could use unpack using the "H" template.

my $hex = unpack "H", $byte;
my $hexstring = unpack "H*", $bytes;
my @hex = unpack "H2" x length($bytes), $bytes;
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update: I might as well add a different way to do that last one (not involving x and therefore probably better):

my @hex = ((unpack "H*", $bytes) =~ /(..)/g);
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