It's pretty neat, but it raises an interesting question:

Is writing an unmodified binary sequence directly out to a file really obfuscation? Certainly, I am not able to immediately interpret the effects of your actions, but I always felt there should be a level of misdirection in an obfuscated program to throw the reader off balance.

Oh, and oddly enough, you actually don't need to declare $a with my even though you're using strict. $a and $b specifically are special variables that come predeclared. They're used in the sort function.

Congrats on your first japh!

elbieelbieelbie