s/(..)/chr(hex($1))/ge;   # convert 0x77 0x00 -> w^@

##</code><code>##

s/(....)/chr(hex($1))/ge  # convert 0x7700    -> ç\234\200

##</code><code>##

# stolen from Data::Dumper and tweaked.. ;-)

sub narrow_char {
    return join('',
        map {chr(hex $_)}
        map{
            (my $s = sprintf("%x",ord($_)))=~s/00$//;
            $s;
        } split//,$_[0]
    );
}

my %info = (
    'CreationDate',
    'D:20060817180621+01\'00\'',
    'Producer',
    "\x{4f00}\x{7000}\x{6500}\x{6e00}\x{4f00}\x{6600}\x{6600}\x{6900}\x{6300}\x{6500}\x{2e00}\x{6f00}\x{7200}\x{6700}\x{2000}\x{3200}\x{2e00}\x{3000}",
    'Creator',
    "\x{5700}\x{7200}\x{6900}\x{7400}\x{6500}\x{7200}",
    'Author',
    "\x{4200}\x{6f00}\x{6200}\x{2000}\x{5700}\x{6500}\x{6200}\x{7300}\x{7400}\x{6500}\x{7200}",
    'Title',
    "\x{4300}\x{4f00}\x{4d00}\x{5000}\x{4500}\x{5400}\x{4900}\x{5400}\x{4900}\x{5600}\x{4500}\x{2000}\x{5300}\x{4100}\x{4600}\x{4100}\x{5200}\x{4900}",
);

foreach my $key (sort keys %info) {
    print "$key -> ";
    print narrow_char($info{$key});
    print "\n";
}

__END__
# output:
Author -> Bob Webster
CreationDate -> D:20060817180621+01'00'
Creator -> Writer
Producer -> OpenOffice.org 2.0
Title -> COMPETITIVE SAFARI

##</code><code>##

sub narrow_char {
    $_[0] =~ s/(.)/chr(ord($1)>>8)/eg
      if (length($_[0]) * 3 == do { use bytes; length $_[0] } );
    $_[0]; 

}