http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=456344


in reply to To read Char-by-Char from a file

If you have an open file handle, see perlfunc:getc, otherwise cog's suggestion is quite elegant (assuming your character-set is not "wide", requiring more than one byte per character).

 

perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001000000000'"