How to output binary files in Perl?

Question

I want to be able to output 0x41, and have it show up as A.

This is what I have tried so far:

my $out;
open $out, ">file.txt" or die $!;
binmode $out;
print $out 0x41;
close $out;

It outputs 65 instead of A in the resulting file. This is not what I want.

I also have read this similar question, but I wouldn't transfer the answer over. pack a short results to 2 bytes instead of 1 byte.

Answer 1

You can use chr(0x41).

For larger structures, you can use pack:

pack('c3', 0x41, 0x42, 0x43) # gives "ABC"

Regarding your suspicion of pack, do go read its page - it is extremely versatile. 'c' packs a single byte, 's' (as seen in that question) will pack a two-byte word.

Answer 2

Use the chr function:

print $out chr 0x41