Actually, here -- this should explain why I'm a Perl programmer and not a Java programmer, in case that was the real question... the following is a repost from comp.lang.perl

Subject: Re: byte array in perl, how? pack, unpack? java to perl
From: "John W. Krahn" <*****@***.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc

vientoloco wrote:
> 
> This funtions are in java.
> I'll try to find similar functions in perl.
> Help, please :)
> Any tutorial?
> 
> /**
>   * transforms a hexadecimal string to a byte array
>   * @return the byte array, or null if the passed String is null
>   * @exception IllegalArgumentException if the passed String is not
> haxadecimal encoded */

In perl you usually don't work with byte arrays but with strings.


>  public static byte[] fromHex(String hex) {

sub fromHex {
    my $hex = $_[0];


>    if (hex == null) {
>      return null;
>    }

    return unless length $hex;


>    else if ((hex.length() % 2) != 0) {
>      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Hex String length must be a
> multiple of 2.");
>    }

    die "Hex String length must be a multiple of 2.n" if length $hex %
2;


>    int length = hex.length() / 2;
>    byte[] result = new byte[length];
>    String hits = "0123456789ABCDEF";
>    String h = hex.toUpperCase();
> 
>    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
>      char c = h.charAt(2 * i);
>      int index = hits.indexOf(c);
>      if (index == -1) {
>        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Hex String can't contain '"
> + c +"'");
>      }
> 
>      int j = 16 * index;
>      c = h.charAt((2 * i) + 1);
>      index = hits.indexOf(c);
>      if (index == -1) {
>        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Hex String can't contain '"
> + c +"'");
>      }

    die "Hex String can't contain '$1'" if $hex =~ /([^[:xdigit:]])/;
<i><b>[Will you look at that!??]</b></i>

>      j += index;
> 
>      result[i] = (byte) (j & 0xFF); }

    $hex =~ s/([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/ge;


>    return result;

    if ( wantarray ) {
        return split //, $hex;
    }
    else {
        return $hex;
    }


>  }


John
-- 
use Perl;
program
fulfillment