As others have mentioned, what you want is probably vec, but you'll have to be careful how you use it. Here's an example on how to convert from your regular input array to a hash of binary sequences. As a note, 0bN is the binary value "N", just like 0xN is the hexadecimal one:

my @slot = qw[ A A B B C C B B ];
my %slot_mask;

# Create a hash based on the input names. Each hash entry
# contains a single binary sequence for the "slot" numbers
# that are specified earliner in @slot
foreach (0..$#slot)
{
     # Create a "blank" scalar if none is defined already
     unless (defined($slot_mask{$slot[$_]})
     {
          $slot_mask{$slot[$_]} = '';
     }

     # Set this particular bit to 1 using an assignment
     vec($slot_mask{$slot[$_]}, $_, 1) = 1;
}

# Retrieval, as per your example, for the 1st slot
if ($slot_mask{A} & 0b00000010)
{
      print "1st is A...\n";
}

# Same idea but with the shift operator that is less prone
# to typographical errors
if ($slot_mask{A} & (1 << 1))
{
      print "1st is A...\n";
}

# And likewise for the 4th or what have you, but this time
# using the vec() function
if (vec($slot_mask{A}, 4, 1))
{
      print "4th is A...\n";
}
[download]

I'm not sure of what the utility of such a thing would be, though. You might be chasing a data structure with little practical value. This is probably what you mean by "trying too hard."

As a note, comparing to 0bN values is probably a bad idea if you have a large number of "slots", such as more than 31, as you'll be using numbers outside the typical range of your run-of-the-mill 32-bit "int".

As a note, in your example you specified A being 0b11000000, which is technically backwards. It is actually 0b00000011 since the 0th slot is on the conceptual right side, not the left, when counting bits.

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