@'={$}=>,{}=>0x70,*,,0x6A,$={$$}=>0x68,*,,0x61,};
$..=chr$_ foreach sort keys%{@'};
$_=$.,s<^.*(.)(.)(.)(.)>@$2$4$3$1@.print;
Apparently perl 5.6 (or at least, ActiveState's perl 5.6.1) does strange, bizarre things when you try to set $, to some value that begins with \x00:
C:\>perl -e "$, .= qq[\x00hjap]; print $,;"
mult
C:\>perl -e "$. .= qq[\x00hjap]; print $. ;"
hjap
C:\>perl -e "$; .= qq[\x00hjap]; print $; ;"
hjap
That first blank character there in the first two output lines is character 0, not a space; with $; you first see character 28, then character 0, then hjap. (my browser won't let me enter character number 28 - even if it could, that's not nice content on an html page) Note that perl 5.8 (though I've only tried cygwin's) does what you'd expect.
I have my suspicions that what's happening in per 5.6 is that it's looking at some spot inside memory that's based on the string's length - for any string that's less than 8 characters, what happens is that I get that many characters returned of \x00multi-; for larger strings I get something like this: (not a real code block, so that I could paste in all those whacky special characters in the 1-31 range)
C:\>perl -e "$, .= qq{\x00abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaabbccddeeffgghhiijjkkllmmnn
ooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzzaaabbbcccdddeeefffggghhhiiijjjkkklllmmmnnnooopppqqqrrrss
stttuuuvvvwwwxxxyyyzzzaaaabbbbccccddddeeeeffffgggghhhhiiiijjjjkkkkllllmmmmnnnnoo
ooppppqqqqrrrrssssttttuuuuvvvvwwwwxxxxyyyyzzzz}; print $,;"
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--
@/=map{[/./g]}qw/.h_nJ Xapou cets krht ele_ r_ra/;
map{y/X_/\n /;print}map{pop@$_}@/for@/
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