http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=624368


in reply to Trouble understanding pack/unpack syntax.

but my suspicion is that the A16 will give me 16 separate array elements

Why would you think that? Test it out.

#/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my $line = "FooBarBaz"; my @array = unpack('A3A3A3',$line); print Dumper \@array;
Produces:
$VAR1 = [ 'Foo', 'Bar', 'Baz' ];
So A16 will produce 1 element.

As to your signature: I would suggest reading something I wrote earlier.