my $file = 'c:/test.txt'; # undef $/ to read whole file in in one go undef $/; open FILE, $file or die "Can't open $file $!\n"; # binmode FILE to supress conversion of line endings binmode FILE; my $data = ; close FILE; # convert data to hex form my $hex = unpack 'H*', $data; print $hex; __END__ 4a75737420416e6f74686572205065726c204861636b65720d0a