8.30. bytes
The
use bytes pragma disables character semantics for
the rest of the lexical scope in which it appears. no
bytes can reverse the effect of use
bytes within the current lexical scope. Perl normally
assumes character semantics in the presence of character data (i.e.,
data from a source marked as being of a particular character
encoding). When use bytes is in effect, the
encoding is temporarily ignored, and each string is treated as a
series of bytes.
bytes is used as follows:
$x = chr(400);
print "Length is ", length $x, "\n"; # "Length is 1"
printf "Contents are %vd\n", $x; # "Contents are 400"
{
use bytes;
print "Length is ", length $x, "\n"; # "Length is 2"
printf "Contents are %vd\n", $x;# "Contents are 198.144"
}