I don't know if it will help you, but don't forget "unpack" for getting binary data. There are many variations:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$string = 'once upon a binary bit';
  foreach my $byte (unpack "C*", $string) {
    print "$byte\t";
}
 print "\n";
[download]

or

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

$/='undef';
my $in = shift || $0;
open (ZZ, "< $in") or die $!;
binmode ZZ;
my $file=(<ZZ>);
my @nums = (unpack "L*",$file);
print "@nums\n";
close ZZ;
[download]