Just one alternative chunk of code, without using split:
You can use unpack and obtain one array which contains the ascii values of the strings:

unpack "C*",$str
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And you can obtain the chars as follow

@a=map chr,unpack "C*",$str;
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Hopes

$_=$,=q,\,@4O,,s,^$,$\,,s,s,^,b9,s,
$_^=q,$\^-]!,,print
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