 Perl Monk, Perl Meditation  Comment on  ... it always performs
the join even if there is no second element.  By this, I think
you mean that there is a  '_' present in all cases, even if it
the last (and dangling) character in the unpack-ed string.  I
tried essentially the same code as jethro under ActiveState
5.8.9 and Strawberries, and and get no extraneous underscore.
>perl -wMstrict -le "my $p = 'ABCDabcdABCDabcd' . pack 'V',
0x3039; print qq{'$p'}; ;; my $unp = join '_', unpack 'H32V*',
$p; print qq{'$unp'}; ;; $p = 'ABCDabcdABCDabcd'; print
qq{'$p'}; ;; $unp = join '_', unpack 'H32V*', $p; print
qq{'$p'}; " 'ABCDabcdABCDabcd90 '
'41424344616263644142434461626364_12345' 'ABCDabcdABCDabcd'
'ABCDabcdABCDabcd'  Can you supply a short, stand-alone code
example that demonstrates the effect you seek to avoid?  In
reply to Re: Casting return value of unpack properly by
AnomalousMonk in thread Casting return value of unpack properly
by puterboy  and:  <code> code here </code>    • Please read
these before you p