here is my "go at it". Its been years since I looked at pack or unpack..But I would suggest when solving a problem like this, make a binary file first that is known to be big "endian" and then work from there. My code for the unpack looks a bit strange. Fletch has some great code above. Anyway make a binary file that you know to be right, then work from there. Packing is easier than unpacking different size data things. My binary "binout" file assumes 32 bit big endian and typical character byte packing for that architecture. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @x = (0x1230,0x1231,0x1232,0x1233,0x1234,
         0x1235,0x1236,0x1237,0x1238,0x1239);

my @c = qw (a b c d e f g h i j);

open (BIN, '>', "binout") || die " unable to open binout";
binmode (BIN) || die "unable to set binmode";

print BIN pack('N'x10,@x);
print BIN pack('a'x10,@c);
close(BIN);

open (BIN, '<', "binout") || die "CAN'T OPEN BINOUT ?!";
while(my $buff = <BIN>)
{  
     my (@tokens)= unpack ('N10C10', $buff);
     foreach my $digit (@tokens[0..9])
     {
        printf "%x \n",$digit;
     }
     foreach my $char (@tokens[10..19])
     {
        printf "%c\n", $char;
     }
}
__END__
binout is: (hex)
0000 1230 0000 1231 0000 1232 0000 1233 0000 1234
0000 1235 0000 1236 0000 1237 0000 1239 0000 1239
6162 6364 6566 6768 696a 

output:
1230 
1231 
1232 
1233 
1234 
1235 
1236 
1237 
1238 
1239 
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j

[download]

In reply to Re^3: unpack() to several variables by Marshall
in thread unpack() to several variables by Saladino

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