#! perl -slw use strict; use Data::Dump qw[ pp ]; sysread( DATA, my $buffer, 80 ) or die $!; my @matrixX10 = map[ split 'C*', $_ ], unpack '(a10)*', $buffer; pp\@matrixX10; my @matrixX5 = map[ split 'C*', $_ ], unpack '(a5)*', $buffer; pp\@matrixX5; __DATA__ 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890